


Mould

by lawlipoppie



Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: Character Death, Coffee Shop, Famous Character, Friends to Lovers, M/M, flatmates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-22
Updated: 2016-11-22
Packaged: 2018-09-01 13:51:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 48,270
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8626990
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lawlipoppie/pseuds/lawlipoppie
Summary: Oh god, do you want to move out? Did I scare you already? I promise I’m not a stinky asshole all the time. Please stay, Mister Superstar.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This is the story of how Baekhyeon dies via a bad joke. You gonna cry.
> 
> (No, but really, I'm serious)

The concert hall rises in peals of applause.

Baekhyeon’s fingers are still poised over the keyboard, hovering, yearning to press a few more notes. They seem ready to crumble under their own weight.

The piano stool pushes back with a harsh, unwilling drag. Baekhyeon smiles, wide, his teeth hooking over the roundness of the lower lip. He hopes it is overdone enough to veil his hesitance.

Step by step, he ambles to the edge of the stage, the lights burning on his cheeks. When he blinks, his eyelids lag as if dusted with charcoal on the inside.

To the very last row of seats, people are standing and beaming in the backdrop of the red velvet that coats the whole theatre. He sees them like a mirage, the spectacle of a night with weak moonshine, twigs projecting monsters on the chipped walls of his childhood.  

He has come a long way. This is a fitting end.

Baekhyeon bows, stiff fingers curled into a soft fist. His spine melts and leaves him in a puddle, cowering before the crowd.

The applause heightens into a strong din which spears into the tenderness in the middle of his chest. Baekhyeon lifts just a fraction, gaze connecting with the twinkles of his mother's eyes, then lower to her wedding ring that is illuminated on her hand which grasps his father’s upon the armrest. He bows once more to silence the hall.

He walks off the stage, leaden footfalls with a spring. Perhaps he is running.

A little girl is waiting for him just as he rounds the corner into the cool and quiet of the staff room. She is holding a huge bouquet of roses, nearly bigger than she is. Baekhyeon fights to raise the smile back up on his face as she thrusts the bouquet in his direction. He descends to her level, one knee on the floor. He takes one rose out of the arrangement and gives it to her. “Thank you,” Baekhyeon says. She starts to giggle, shrill and raw. She looks like she wants to thank him too, but her speech will not cooperate. Baekhyeon pets her hair, black curls winding around the paleness of his hand as he does so.

He turns on his heels, having a strong clasp on the young, vile thorns of the flowers. He is still smiling, and as petals mixed with blood fall in his wake to the dressing room, he thinks that this pain is nothing compared to what is to come.

 

 

 

“I want it pink with black,” Baekhyeon insists to the shop assistant all of a sudden. "Cotton candy pink." This was not part of the plan.

His eyes rake over the shop. It is as if the stink of rubber and metal drowns the place and he cannot see anything anymore. Finally, he spots a tint on a half-ripped flyer on the window. Pink enough. "Like so," he points. "Make sure the black is the blackest. None of that off-green, okay?”

The shop assistant nods, hastening to scribble notes on the sides of his order.

Outside the store, Seoul towers lazily over the ground. It is wearing colourful greys, not just monotone greys. It looks like a city to dream about; concrete that cedes to a caress.

He does not even notice the seasons anymore, the flowers on the side of the road are in a continuous bloom. Perhaps it is spring, or just bordering on winter. Autumn- and the rains are late, stuck a continent behind.

To his left, the terrace of a café is full, over brimming with customers and a flurry of waiters balancing trays. When he had entered the shop, it was desolate. It must be lunchtime now. Through the mask, he expects to be able to smell the abundant clouds of coffee, but he can’t, just his own soft breathing, confined, stained with staleness.

It is a fitting afternoon to commence, the petering notes of a prologue in the screeching tires of a busy city, an end to a defiant beginning.

 

 

 

A part of Baekhyeon’s closet is a mosaic of stacked suitcases. Then sponsored designer clothing, next his own clothing, rows of polished shoes, displays of jewellery- bracelets, rings, real gold plated with oxidable alloys, fake, fashionable rust in the grooves.

Baekhyeon unzips the smallest suitcase and starts looking around. He seeks for things that he deems necessary, unique, that cannot be picked from the nearest 7 Eleven, cannot be worn down until comfy and smelling of himself. He rounds the whole home twice.

There is nothing.

 

 

 

The address is scrawled in black marker on the glass of the entrance into the building. Wonmi, with a missing _n_ and an eaten _m_. Inside, it smells like moisture flourishing into the plaster, of entrapped coldness.  The walls have been painted over a few times.

Next to the frame of his old door, the doodles are a phantom under the layers. _Byeon family_ surrounded by the mainstream erroneous shape of a heart. Back then, he had thought the rim of that heart will never rupture, will always keep them together. And it did.

He does not press the doorbell. It never worked- Baekhyeon remembers pouring juice over it the first day they moved here. His knuckles wait, willing to knock. It is still too soon. It has taken him a little over an hour to get here from Seoul, whilst it had taken him years to dig himself out of this hole of a neighbourhood. An hour is nothing. An hour is mockery.

During its fall, his hand grazes the wood. A mistake that is more courageous than he is. He raps then, a few times. The wood is old, the sound of his knocks overreacting through the surface.  Then the door is opened by a smiling Suyeong, a rush of dimples and fruity air fresheners spilling over.

 

 

 

The house is devoid of youth save for Jongdae, who has yet to finish high school. All his other cousins have grown and have left.

This is the kind of apartment that looks miserable if it is empty, if there is nothing to distract from the splotchy yellow of the flooring.

So Baekhyeon tries his best to at least fill the silence, fawning over his aunt and the snarky Jongdae who is going through a teenage rebellion, if the mop of permed, bleached hair on his head is anything to go by. Baekhyeon feels like he should have come with something, a gift, given that he is returning after so long. His hands are empty, so instead fills them with hugs.

Suyeong’s husband, Donghae, joins at dinner, one that Baekhyeon has helped Suyeong prepare. He is a funny man, waist thicker than the bunching of his smile at the corners of his eyes. It is a hot pot and Baekhyeon is left telling all the stories he never got to say since he left this town. Where he has been and who he has met. He does not even have to cook anything, as everyone is just filling his plate at random intervals. They are particularly generous when he makes them snort with laughter.

He manages to swap Jongdae’s water glass with a few sips of soju, without anyone else noticing. Jongdae’s eyes become glassy too, just enough to for Baekhyeon to brighten up.

 

 

 

Baekhyeon accommodates to lumpy pillows and being the bystander of separate routines. The crinkle of Suyeong’s toiletries at the crack of dawn as she gets ready, the brief click of low heels from the hall until they peter out. Then Jongdae wakes up and the screeching weird noise of his phone as he plays some games until he feels about ready to move can be heard. Donghae never wakes until noon.

He wakes with a start too, reaching for his phone, checking for some sort of schedule. But there is nothing, just the incoming string of fan emails. They are fun, heartfelt almost, and Baekhyeon rolls around on the springy mattress until his eyes burn from dryness. Some of them can get quite lengthy.

His old room is used for storage now. Baekhyeon sees the shadows left by the shelves on the wall. Each day he stays here, he looks at the pattern- a ghost trapped into the lime. Yet nothing else about it seems to have changed. His aunt’s family has been living in this place for longer than his own.

He plays video games with Jongdae, legs thrown over the coffee table in the living room, the borrowed pyjama pants folded into his high, fuzzy socks. His hair is shaggy and soft. Baekhyeon runs his hands through it repeatedly, no longer avoiding the hairspray that used to cake it.

He has not played any games in a long time. The graphics are now beyond headache-inducing pixilation, and often it feels like watching a movie. For a few tries, he feels out-dated, or Jongdae is just too sharp, but he practices on his own, on mute, silent as a mouse, a few nights when everyone is asleep. He stops just about when Suyeong wakes up to go to school. Then Baekhyeon is the one winning, having gotten the hang of it, the controller like home in his fingers. He could trust them, he knows as much.

He texts Chanyeol each high score and Chanyeol replies with very impressed looking stickers. Like he even knows what this game is about.

When he goes out again, after a week, it is a compulsion to take out the trash. A girl in a high school uniform spots him, and Baekhyeon is overdressed in dress pants, his shirt buttoned all the way- habits, what fame enforced on him. He gives her an autograph written with her glitter pen, something she most likely writes the name of her crush with, and wishes her a wonderful life.

 

 

Chanyeol arrives all dressed up in his suit, most likely having run straight from a meeting. He is wearing a jazzy tie- the sunniness of him in the middle of corporate grey- and the tiepin Baekhyeon gifted him. Baekhyeon no longer feels the need to tug it undone and mould his lips around the collarbone underneath.

Baekhyeon looks from side to side, not a person in sight. It is just starting to darken. So he steps out fully into the cold air. He is wearing some oversized pyjamas, so old and holey, his own pair, overstretched and falling down his wrists and way over his ankles. His battered slippers cut into his heels.

Chanyeol smiles at him, his megawatt smile, like he is trying to sell something, and it does not matter that the warm night is swarming with twenty varieties of flies and bugs and it is so humid that his hair gets frizzy in an instant.

"I brought your play thing, my beloved hobo," he whisper-screams, gesturing to the small platform tied to his car. It is a glamorous car. It is almost degrading to have it here in this rumbling suburb.

Baekhyeon looks down at his pyjamas and disintegrating slippers and he sighs, beckoning Chanyeol closer with his hand. "Take me to it."

Chanyeol scoffs, a little sound, and attempts to roll his eyes, but gives up halfway under the pressure of his smile. "I drove an hour to get here," he kind of complains, even as he crouches down, his back to Baekhyeon. Baekhyeon drapes himself over the offered surface.

"Why are you so big, I cannot even cling to you properly,” Baekhyeon complains, weakly looping around Chanyeol's shoulders. His arms go under Baekhyeon's thighs. They will not fall.

Chanyeol dumps him on the edge of the trunk of the car, and Baekhyeon immediately bends to untie the strings of the fabric draped over the platform. "Help me," Baekhyeon whines as he fights with the knots. Chanyeol watches him struggle a bit more until Baekhyeon glares at him. It takes him just two movements before the black fabric slides off.

Baekhyeon stares and stares. The shine of it is blinding, a token of his upcoming recklessness. Or perhaps a meagre wish fulfilled. "It is the right shade of pink," Baekhyeon says in the end, as if he can even discern in in the sicken glow of the street lamp.

Chanyeol regards him with a small frown, unwelcome on the smooth expanse of his skin. There is no enthusiasm to Baekhyeon, his words flat, a dim flicker of it at best.  He shakes his head, the long-ago gelled strands of his hair breaking off his carefully composed hairstyle. “You love it, don’t you,'' Chanyeol says. Cicadas drown his inquiry.

Baekhyeon waits, looks again at the machinery, at its shine and its hugeness. The engine is massive, the armour over it barely cloaking it. Baekhyeon cannot wait to get on it.

"Chanyeol, hey hey,” he chirps, jumping on the platform, “Look at my motherfucking amazing motorcycle,” he says, and with the tone and vividness of a tiny kid, like they are toothless and playing in the mud all over again. It's not even a lie.

"Holy shit, your motorcycle, Baek," Chanyeol plays along, eyes wide in pure marvel.

 

 

 

Chanyeol stays there for a night, and he is all enthusiasm with Jongdae and Suyeong. He teases Jongdae with all sorts of embarrassing stories of his toddlerhood. He was a baby when they were still around.

He sleeps on the floor next to Baekhyeon's bed. All the beds in this house are too small anyway. They do not have another pillow, so he sleeps on a mountain of plushies, the legs of a teddy bear around his neck, a warm hug resembling a chokehold.

 

 

 

Chanyeol cooks breakfast for the whole family. It is a Saturday morning. The house is cramped enough for it to be imbued to the core with the smell. He is not the son of a restaurateur for nothing. 

Baekhyeon sees him to his car. "I'll come again,” he promises, bringing Baekhyeon into an embrace. He is late, he is in a hurry, yet he takes his time in keeping Baekhyeon close. "Start small, okay? Like I taught you with the bike," he nods toward the covered motorcycle crammed into a nook in the parking lot. Maybe he worries that he will be donating organs in no time if he climbs on that thing. Not that anyone would want them.

“I probably won’t be able to get gas in that thing without the whole nation knowing,” Baekhyeon scoffs. “Tabloids will keep you updated on my endeavours.”

“I’d rather have you keeping me updated.”

“I send you like a million texts a day.” He narrows his eyes. He knows the curve makes them all puppy-like. “And you want more?”

“Everything, Baekhyeon,” Chanyeol says. It is too soft, too heavy. “Tell me everything.”

“Okay, you asked for it. You’ll hear all about every pebble in this town,” he takes the tie clip out of Chanyeol’s pocket and pins the tie with it. He pats his chest. “You’re so late.”

“Everything, Baekhyeon,” Chanyeol hollers in his natural unrestrained boisterousness before he gets into the car. That tone rarely comes out.

 

 

 

On the nightstand in his room, he spots the envelope with his new driver licence. The old one had expired.

Baekhyeon looks at the picture. He seems calm and unenthusiastic; unlike he was on the previous one, having taken it just so he could part time as a delivery boy to earn a few extra music lessons.

 

 

 

He lives with them for a while longer. Their attitude, no matter how warm towards him, say that he is a just temporary stay. Their routines are something constant, the same every day, the changes only minor.

Witnessing them irks Baekhyeon. He cannot stand repetition anymore. He cannot stand the template of sounds, of events that he is an extra in.

They are so unlike the ones he had, centred on public appearances when he was prepared to be judged first thing in the morning. He just had to make it until the studio, and then it would be another world altogether.

“I do not want to live alone,” Baekhyeon says over the phone. His foot taps, out of restlessness, out of boredom, cold on the tiles of the small balcony. He has learned to work around the slight glitch in his voice already. The air is starting to whiten in front of his mouth. Maybe this time he will have the chance to adore winter.

“I’ll find someone,” Chanyeol hums. Thudding and shuffling sounds in the background. He must be at the office doing paperwork, the bane of his existence. “Do you have any criteria?”

“A male with a pulse.”

“Oh,” Chanyeol exclaims, “that narrows it down a lot.”

“A nice male with a nice pulse.”

“I’ll find the nicest male with the nicest pulse.”

Baekhyeon kisses the receiver, a wet little smack of his lips that carries too many details. “Easy with the slobber, Baek,” Chanyeol chides, but he is laughing, low and gruff, spreading throughout his voice. Baekhyeon gives him three more kisses, increasingly explicit, and hangs up.

 

 

 

Ahead he sees bushes and short fences. He has not gone out to explore yet. It should be him looking for a place, but he has asked Chanyeol who has been here all this while, visiting some other friends and his extended family. He has come back; he kept those ties, whereas Baekhyeon has not stepped in this neighbourhood in over ten years.

 

 

 

He dresses up in inconspicuous clothing. He borrows some of Jongdae’s wax for his hair, something cheap and smelling of imposed manliness, making him feel as if he is lathering testosterone on his bangs to keep them away.

On the streets, the looks he receives are more than anything of disbelief. He is strolling along the avenue, casual and aimless. He is not approached, but he hears the click of phone cameras going off repeatedly.

 He only recognizes an old lady. She used to sell yuja at the market whilst crouched beside a blanket of them. She lost sight in one of her eyes, but she still grins at Baekhyeon, a sparkling mouthful of artificial teeth, and tells him he is handsome. “Now buy more because I flattered you.”

Baekhyeon does buy all the dried persimmons she has in the box, three bags of them and eats from the bag one by one until he ends up sticky all over his mouth. He passes the gates of his old high school too. The fence is lower now, easier to climb.

If he looks up Jungwon high school on the internet, he will find pictures of himself and none of the grounds he grew up despising.

But the rest of Bucheon is as he remembers it. Maybe with fancier cars and more bared shoulders, prettier flowers planted by the sides of the road, but otherwise the same, cracked and quiet. A too tame playground, the hisses of unoiled swing hinges akin to the half-heartedly sung songs of preschools.

 

 

 

His aunt teaches him a recipe every evening, a small knife in her hand as she mumbled details about cooking times and sauce consistencies. He cooks for the whole family a few times, Jongdae pretending that it tastes terrible just to be a little shit. It is the aroma of a childhood that he never even missed.

He looks at the pleasant smiles on their faces, foggy from the spice, their endless hospitality. They are too nice, Baekhyeon deems yet again, as if he never abandoned them.

 

 

 

“Found a nice kid,” Chanyeol says, and it is an incredibly hoarse drawl. He must be exhausted “And he has a nice place and a nice pulse too.”

“How kid are we talking?”

“Not very. Just enough to have some drama for your entertainment.”

“So a twink.”

“A dignified young man who is very good with his mouth.”

A hiccup bursts out of Baekhyeon. It began as a chuckle. “How exactly is he good with his mouth?”

Chanyeol actually laughs, the ring abrupt. That must have taken too much effort. “You’ll see.”

Baekhyeon listens to the blaring snores of Suyeong’s husband and he nods, kicking out his feet from under the blankets, suddenly excited. “Okay okay, I’ll take him.”

 

 

He flips through the motorcycle’s user manual after he wakes up. There is gunk in his eyes, and he blinks thickly at the notions. At lot of drawings at least, arrows and mechanical terms that he has no idea what they mean. The language is slightly condescending, as if it is mocking the reader for reading it.  

He bins the manual, running down the stairs and to the motorcycle where it sits covered in a nook of the unpaved parking lot. As he feeds the reservoir the few bottles he has bribed Jongdae into buying for him, he looks at the controls. It cannot be that hard. The engine has a soft hum, just as he ordered, the quiver of it mild. Mounting, the position is awkward compared to the scooters he had once mastered.

It just works. Baekhyeon is able to steer it, control the speed. The responses are fine-tuned, sensitive just right.

 

 

 

Baekhyeon plays with it all day. He goes up, past Gimpo, then west, rounding the coast. He has the time to look at street signs, to see some more scenery. Whenever he stops, feeling the steady unmoving ground under his feet, he takes a few pictures, rolling skies and open waters, for Chanyeol.

 

 

 

It is later than the hour that has been agreed on, but Baekhyeon appears at the door of the apartment with his hair wild and damp from wearing the helmet for so long. The door is a nice door, the building is nice, the floors are white and polished.

He rings the doorbell, the tone of an antiquated phone. Two bursts of three seconds, then the door is opened by a young man. He is lean, wearing sweatpants and an expensive-looking button up shirt. A flowery tiara is keeping his dark locks back, and one of his hands is poised weirdly, a viscous substance dripping from it onto the floor.

His lips gather into a pout. A full, luscious one, Baekhyeon observes. “Who…” he starts.

“Potential flat mate?” Baekhyeon grins, slightly, encouraging.

He blinks, slow and confused, before a spark ignites in his eyes. “Sehun did this didn’t he? That damn brat,” he mutters, not really angry but more like impressed.  “That was quick.” Then he regards Baekhyeon with a shy smile, stepping out of the doorway. “Come in.”

Baekhyeon steps inside, and he sees the open kitchen littered with bowls and bags.

“I’m baking a cake,” the man clarifies, walking back to the cooking area. He brings out a slim scale from under the island.

“I’m Baekhyeon,” Baekhyeon replies. Perhaps it is a joke, because the boy halts, sugar spilling over, a tick to his head, then he chuckles, something short and sweet.

“I’m Jongin.”

“And also baking a cake,” Baekhyeon says, taking a seat on the stool adjacent to the kitchen island. Cocoa puffs up in Jongin’s face when he gets too near in order to measure exactly fifty grams of it.  The substance on his hand is some egg white, now dry, a shiny film on his fingertips. He is reading from a wrinkled little receipt, stained around the edges, as he measures out the ingredient.

“What’s the occasion?” Baekhyeon inquires when the tin has been pushed into the oven.

Jongin is gathering spoons and spatulas into one of the dirty bowls. “My fiancé of two years just broke up with me.” The whisk is next. “I mean, yesterday morning. At 8:22. I wasn’t even awake when she moved out. She’s always been a rooster. A cute rooster. But still a rooster that isn’t mine anymore.”

His finger dips into a smudge of batter left on the bowl. It is mostly butter and sugar, forgotten, untouched by flour or egg. He licks the finger clean, a wet swipe and a pop of his lips. “Now I have a spare room. And a broken heart.” His head is not lowered, but high, a peculiarly wide smile on his face, twitchy, and his eyes are so vacant. It does not match at all. It is like witnessing a spar between gales.

“And cake. You also have cake.”

“I’ll marry the cake. I’ll just change out of these pants and be all perfect to play the groom. You emcee the ceremony.” This too is so vacant, the hilarity of it all gone. Baekhyeon has just met a wreck of a boy. Wreck for a wreck. Baekhyeon has faith that they will make it work.

“But have you proposed to the cake?”

Jongin looks at him with some sort of disbelief, indignation. It is playful, until the angle of his jaw sharpens along with his expression. “I made it. It’s mine. It’s got no say in this,” he looks down at the oven, the light inside meek and hot. “Actually that’s a little…dub-con. No, it’s full blown non-con.” Back to Baekhyeon, jaw still set, but with determination this time. “I will propose.”

It is then that Baekhyeon laughs, and it is not from the shallowness of a joke. It is the pure, precious merriment of being so entertained by someone’s mere demeanour. And Jongin looks at him, suddenly sober, calculative, before a smile tugs at his lips too, genuine this time. It is a nice sight.

“I’ll be the witness.”

The ring is a circle of rosettes on the top of the cake, a half-assed diamond on a side. Jongin gets down on one knee, his head barely peeking over the counter, and asks it to marry him. “Why is it not saying anything?”

“I think you got rejected,” Baekhyeon appraises the silence. “Again.”

“Oh,” Jongin gets up. His bones creak, and the tiara falls off. “Fantastic. Time to grieve with some cake.”

Then he stabs it, and piles scoops of ice cream on top. He hands Baekhyeon a tiny fork, takes one for himself, and just eats it from the cake stand. “This is great. I am fantastic at this. Look what a fantastic man she lost.” Baekhyeon takes a mouthful too.

“This is indeed fantastic,” and Jongin grins, lighting up a bit, as if surprised. Maybe he expected to only praise himself, not for anyone else to like it.

“Will you have me then? Since I’m so fantastic.”

Baekhyeon does not even look beyond the warm glow of the two lamps in the kitchen, to the darkness of the rest of the apartment. They talk no finances either. It seems Jongin needs a flatmate for the same reason Baekhyeon does, not to sustain the bills, but to have someone to stumble into in the living room. He wants to fill these eyes.

“I would like to.” And this is the contract, this is their agreement, this is how Baekhyeon gains a new home, with rich chocolate sticking to his palate.

 

 

 

“How was it? Do you like it?” Chanyeol asks.

“He’s hot,” Baekhyeon replies after a few moments. He cannot think of anything else to describe the encounter. It was brief and extremely intimate for a first meeting. Seems fitting to mention only a superficial detail. “And I like hot dudes, so yes.” His voice still lowers on that. There is no one around. “He is indeed good with his mouth, I found out,” a reminiscing grin tugs at his lip.

Chanyeol laughs, the strangled guffaw he only indulges in when he is at home and alone.

“Thank you, Chanyeol,” Baekhyeon says, and he says it too slow, as if he is grateful for a lifetime of kindness.

 

 

 

He uses thin, black bags from the convenience store to pack the few things he has gathered at Suyeong’s. Nobody is home. He leaves the bed tidy, all the plushies in order. He said his temporary good byes last night, over a dinner as boisterous as the one they had when he arrived. He will only be going a few streets lower, not even out of Wonmigu, merely changing scenery to high rises instead of shack-like architecture and untamed, lurking greenery.

They all fit in the little trunk of the motorcycle. He had checked right after he left Jongin’s place.

The licence plate is not known yet, but there have been a few blurry pictures, speculations surfacing on the internet. It may or may not be him.

Baekhyeon likes riding it so much that it will take no time for it to be confirmed. Then maybe he will either find presents hooked on the handle bar or his tires cut.

He encircles the whole complex thrice before he gives in and descends into the underground parking. His hand refuses to brake sooner.

 

 

 

Jongin is still sleepy as he opens the door, eyes puffy and lips puffy and hair puffier. His mouth opens, seemingly to say something, but instead he scratches at his belly and bows, leaving the door wide open as he turns. His feet tap, a straggle of toes on the floorboards. The sound carries on out of Baekhyeon’s view, then the beat of a collapse that must have hurt.

Baekhyeon wonders if he’s the kind of person who would rather crack their skull open and not ever wake up again than have to face the morning.

Baekhyeon steps inside, leaving his shoes by the single pair dormant in the foyer. Polish next to dullness, leather next to suede.

In daylight, the apartment looks different. Brightness cuts all the ridges of the furniture, angular and abrupt. The colours match too, a strife of warmed greys, like silver set ablaze. Baekhyeon doubts Jongin is the one who picked all of this- the harmony is so good that it seems cheap, aseptic.

Then there are the reams of papers and books and cups all over the place to counter it all.

From the current flowing through the open door, the pages rustle, forests rubbing together, then the door is pushed shut by the gust. The crash makes Baekhyeon ears ring.

He ambles in the direction of the other door, a different wood from the one of Jongin’s, and opens it. Unoiled hinges.  The walls are bare, the shelves are bare, and it smells of sawdust and minced time. Baekhyeon looks down at the two little bags he is holding, one of them with just persimmons, and deems that the room will not be much fuller after he is done settling in.  

Calling his manager, Amber, will be a conversation too long and too abrasive, so he goes for her assistant, ordering him to have picked some stuff from his apartment and sent to this address.

Baekhyeon looks out the window. This is the twenty-third story, high enough to make him feel too powerful or too infinitesimal. It’s about a third of the height of his penthouse. At least people can be seen from here.

He touches none of the books splattered over the couch and coffee table, but he runs his eyes over the spines of the ones on the shelves, picking a random one and leafing through it for the hour and a half it takes to have three boxes brought to the door. Even through the commotion, Jongin does not wake, his form fused with the sheets of his bed.

Baekhyeon’s refused the services of the ones bringing the things, so he runs around, steps cushioned as he distributes nothings here and there. His toothbrush in a separate cup in the bathroom, the cleaning supplies under the sink. He huffs and puffs as he fits the bedding over the mattress. His favourite mug, the varnish of it cracked along the rim, next to the other one on the counter. The packs of skincare placed on the ledges in his room.  

He is handling the clothes from the third box when Jongin nearly trips into him. He is glancing down with a defocused stare. It’s way past noon, and he looks just about the same as he was when he greeted him in the morning.

“Aren’t you a superstar?” His eyes narrow, like he cannot pinpoint where he knows Baekhyeon from.

“Not right now, as you see,” Baekhyeon gesticulates to the thrown garments around him. Folding has never been his forte.

“You…piano, do not you?”

“I piano, yes.”

“And you’re a superstar.”

For some reason, Baekhyeon hides his hands underneath the t-shirt in his lap. “Yes, that too. Occasionally.” A superstar- as if he is doused in glitter and smiling with a mouthful of lies instead of teeth.

Jongin nods, hair prickling his eyes as he crouches next to Baekhyeon. He stretches into a yawn before grabbing a shirt and starting to fold as well. “You’re not exempted from washing dishes and taking out the trash, Mister Superstar,” Jongin says, words splitting into another yawn.

 

 

 

“Is he a college student or something?” Baekhyeon asks as he shuffles on the parquet. He has these thin slippers that slide so well. He has already face planted into the wall a few times. This is some primitive kind of fun, and Baekhyeon is mastering it.  

Chanyeol gives his perfunctory hum, acknowledgement that he has heard, not that he is listening. No reply comes. He just puts Baekhyeon on speaker and lets him ramble in the background. Perchance he is not even in the room anymore, for he can even hear the faint static of the air rather than Chanyeol’s breathing.

“I’m not,” Jongin says, a creaky holler ferrying from his room.

Baekhyeon gasps, sliding in two bursts to the other end of the apartment, to Jongin’s door frame. Damn, this is fun. “Did you just talk?” he asks with suspicion. Excitement gives into his tone. He is so bored that any noise would get him merry. He cannot wait to get rid of the fog of new acquaintanceship with Jongin, and it has been two days since the man has said anything to him. “I think you’re selectively mute.”

“I’m not.” His fists twist over his eyes quite roughly, cheeks scrunching along.

Baekhyeon cannot even see him properly over the towers of textbooks on his desk. Twelfth grade biology, he sees on one. “I don’t know how else to explain all of these then,” he gestures. Pens and papers and a huge pin board on one of the walls.

“I’m a writer.” He stops rubbing and gives Baekhyeon a red-rimmed stare. His lips are paler. “A writer is a person who writes. And I do that like eighty per cent of the time, so I must be a writer I guess.” He suddenly focuses on Baekhyeon, and his face twists even more. “I’m sorry I forgot to…acknowledge you. Neglected you. Inspiration punched me in the liver. Then it punched me in the nuts for good measure.”

“Is every time you write a near death experience?”

Jongin chuckles, lengthy and translucent. “No. Just now. It usually punches me in the heart, but now it’s in crumbs, so that would be no use. It would just be like heart puree. Like mashed strawberries, except terribly morbid and stupidly metaphorical and reeking of sour iron.” Pallor alights on his features, a twitch to his eyes, as if he is having all that gore in front of him for real. “Oh god, do you want to move out? Did I scare you already? I promise I’m not a stinky asshole all the time. Please stay, Mister Superstar.” 

The phone in his hand still has the phone call going on. He hears some movement, more than the clamour of static. “Chanyeol,” he says. “This is the best thing you ever found.”

Jongin smiles widely, and there is some substance to it this time, weighing prettily into its corners.

 

 

 

It turns out Jongin is in a continuous interrogatory mode whenever he interacts with Baekhyeon. It is not the prying kind but rather the detail oriented, plain and for which he usually has no answer kind. Such as why he has his things strategically placed so he could be out the door in the shortest amount of time, when he does not need to be anywhere. He had never noticed. Now he has time to grind his coffee beans instead of throwing himself an instant one just so he can get rid of the queasiness of an empty stomach before rushing out.

Jongin has weird habits. He is jittery. The door to his room never closes. Sometimes it is ajar, and when it is ajar, he looks for something in the closet. That happens only when he plans to go out, sometimes getting dressed and deciding against it as he about is to put his shoes on.  

More than anything, Jongin is looking at him with reverence, with curiosity, and it takes a short while for Baekhyeon to notice he acts like this with everything. It is just a writer’s curiosity, just him watching his everything. He never asks though, how come Baekhyeon is here.

He is at the peak of his heartbreak, not really sad yet, a little numb, holding it all in, abusing it in is writing.

Baekhyeon sees sporadically that there is more to him that the surface interest, the intent to extract trivia, to write it down.

It dawns on him that this is just Jongin’s method of mourning, of letting go, when he notices the bottle of shampoo in the main bathroom, empty already, but filled with water so nothing is wasted. The hair bands he constantly wears. He wants to smell like her, wants to cling to her.

 

 

 

Baekhyeon revels in the smell of gasoline now. He notices it clinging to him, beyond the strata of his skin. He cannot negate his attraction to the speed, the thundering purr of pushing a machine to its limits. He has bought equipment, thickened leather apparel- windproof regalia; gloves and a bunch of kneepads for when he gets daring with the veering. The crack of armour as it cuts across him is resemblant to that of a whip.

The housekeeper who passes weekly by his home in Seoul reports to him every time the amount of speeding tickets that have amassed in his mail. A few tens, a negligible expense. He never goes past a speed limit that could revoke his permit.

Baekhyeon reaches Daejeon, the longest ride yet, flying beneath the motely strobes of the Expo Bridge just a bit after midnight. All he thinks about is how two of his concerts would fit into this time frame- each symphony a city long, the intermezzos blending into the screens of ceaseless black on either sides of the highway.

It’s pushing noon when he returns. Quietude imbues into him the moment he kills the engine, tingles in his fingertips. His heart rate dips, gradual and lulling.

Jongin is in the living room, awake- which means he has not slept at all, bending over the table as he taps away on his laptop, back to the front door. Delayed, he calls a greeting over his shoulder, calling him Sujeong, not for the first time. He never looks up, never bothers checking.  

Baekhyeon walks quietly to his room, without retort, keeping his hands to himself and his steps careful, so his masculine cologne and the fetor of fuel does not spread and shatter Jongin’s bubble.

In his room he texts Chanyeol, the residual quiver transferring onto the keyboard. _I am addicted to this._

The message is read instantly. More than ten seconds pass and nothing comes in reply- Chanyeol’s disapproval; he was hoping Baekhyeon would hate the motorcycle.

The phone starts ringing in his hand though, and Baekhyeon bites his smile and accepts it.

“Have you given it a name?” The voice bypasses any greeting or response, the inflection of his query flat.

Baekhyeon cages the phone between his ear and his shoulder, working at the zippers of his jacket. “I did. Aeri.”

Chanyeol laughs. “What if it is not a fan of yours?”

“Impossible.” Not even a beat. “I’m its daddy, and a prodigy too. What is there not to like?” The jacket coils on his wrists. He jumps until it falls to the floor. “You should try this some time. I’ll take you with me.”

“You’re not afraid of speeding tickets,” Chanyeol peeps.

Baekhyeon will not forgive the housekeeper for this treachery.

“And I was the one picking up that thing for you. Of course I looked at the engine capacity. Industrial shredders are safer than that thing.” Admonishment mixes with pretence, a frontage for worry.

“I’ll keep the speed legal for you, babe,” Baekhyeon cajoles, unbuttoning his pants. He is too lazy to tug them down manually, so he shimmies his hips until they slide off and bunch on his knees.

“I’ll never think about it.”

“Oh, but you _will_ , babe.”

Then whatever Chanyeol says back is lost because Baekhyeon tries to take a step forward, his legs locking on the fabric as he plunges inelegantly into the bed, face first, phone flying out of his hand.

 

 

 

Meals with Jongin are either a grandiose affair or a nearly pathetic one. The experiences are either a sugar-coated luxury or salted wind as they shiver under a bridge.

Baekhyeon rarely goes shopping, for it may end up in a mess, drowned into a crowd of fans and a million shutter clicks; whatever brand of milk he bought being sold out all over the country. Jongin hardly steps out of the house, and when it happens, it is for at least half a day, and he wanders god knows where, coming back empty handed and grumpy every time.

He is now boiling a pot of some soba noodles he rescued from the pantry and frying them in soy and some vinegar. It is bland and crispy and tangy because he has poured way too much vinegar into the mixture.   

Baekhyeon likes them like this, eating straight from the frying pan, chopsticks scratching against the metal. “We could have ordered,” Baekhyeon says around a mouthful, like every time other time they have eaten this kind of meal. The initiative gets weaker and weaker. He does not know what it is so delectable about eating this kind of sloppy stuff, but it definitely brings him a rush. It washes over the sequelae of having had a billion five star meals. He is pretty sure Jongin gets satisfaction out of his veiled excitement too.

As per script, Jongin regards him with a glower, tinted oil lining his lips as he says, “No. We will not get that low.”

“The nutritional value of this is even lower than that,” he attempts countering, mouth too full, and Jongin just hisses at him, all scornful and joyous. 

When the impetus comes, Jongin puts it all into making sweets. They are complex- it usually takes more than two days to finish a batch. Baekhyeon always watches him bake, and there is a line between his eyebrows that will not smooth out no matter how much he grins at Baekhyeon’s antics.  

Jongin bakes out of frustration. Three flavours of cupcakes and at least two batches of different kinds of frosting in the fridge at any given time. Their aroma is strong, scorching into the fluff, and incredibly sweet, as though aiming to compensate for something.  There is always a pack of butter on the counter, left out to soften.

Baekhyeon can tell that it is particularly bad; the torment of whatever thing is on his mind, when Jongin would put on a jacket over his pyjamas and run out, only to return with a carton of thirty eggs. The mixer would always be working deep into the night.

 

 

 

Jongin’s hair is an everlasting mess from how he runs his hand through it. He is not wearing the flowery tiara anymore. Baekhyeon sees the abused locks tufting over the towers of books every time he passes by Jongin’s room.

He never sits normally either, contorted in some position that Baekhyeon cringes at the sight of. “Writing hurts,” Jongin says, breathy. He is on his back, laptop on his stomach, and his shins underneath him.

Baekhyeon does not laugh at that anymore. It is a feeling he can relate to; the deep ache within his joints after a full day of practice. Sedentary activities, no matter how mentally stimulating, are bound to take their toll.

Hence, he ventures to try these positions too, along with Jongin, stretching in every direction. Jongin’s flexibility puts his to shame, but he still cheers on, until they make contests out of who can hold a pose the longest. The one who loses has to go pick up some groceries.

Jongin begins letting him win after the second time Baekhyeon comes back panting, holding the bag with the goods to his chest for dear life, eyes wide after he had to run from a crazy fan who had every intention of abducting him.

 

 

 

Baekhyeon sips his coffee directly from the French press, his other hand toying with the bottle of vanilla extract. In front of him is a tray of cupcakes left to cool. He saw the frosting in the fridge- pale yellow, lemon probably. Baekhyeon does not know what this fixation is on Jongin, but there is something about him that is unnerving in the most delightful of ways. Jongin’s general idiosyncrasy. An itch that has morphed into a tickle.

 He plucks out his phone from under the elastic of his underwear- these pants have no pockets. _The drama of this boy is making me fat. Where the fuck did you find him?_ He has meant to inquire this for a while.

 _Someone will drown between your thighs._

 Chanyeol only says things like these-lewd- when he is in the middle of writing lyrics. Outside this circumstance, he is one big, dorky prude.

Baekhyeon sends him the finger. After a few more sips, he also sends a kiss.

 

 

 

An hour later:   _Sehun, his best friend, is a dance instructor at the company._

 

 

 

It is too soon for him to have expected to completely divest of his habits. He has abided by hectic schedules for over a decade, hasty on his feet, chased by the expectation of coming up with a symphony greater than the last one. He still checks for rehearsal announcements, being called to inspect auditoriums. He has stepped on red carpets more than he has stepped on green soil.

The first thing he does each morning is to still warm up his fingers. He burns through entire bottles of hand cream between fortnights.  As he files his nails, every three days, he thinks of the sprightly after notes of the piece he ends all concerts with. 

Now there is nothing of that kind in his life. He misses it, perhaps more than he is willing to admit.

Today, Baekhyeon caves in and watches one of his concerts in Vienna, the centrepiece of an acclaimed festival. Tens of thousands had attended; a motionless sea that Baekhyeon could not see the margins of.

He recalls the wonderful gardens there, sculptures and quietness, the melt of Salzburger Nockerl on his tongue, the stench of a mountain of flowers piled up in his hotel room.

It was three years after graduation, after being scouted, after meeting Chanyeol again.

Before Baekhyeon can regret anything, Jongin knocks on his door, his head poking in. His glasses slide down his shiny nose, red spots bruised on either side of the bridge.

“Come beat me?” He bats his eyelashes, and he has a broomstick in each hand.

 

 

 

“Then you twist my arm and kneel onto my back,” Jongin instructs. He is panting, his hair wilder than ever, and his shirt is some small thing that threatens to rip apart from the strength of his wheezing. Baekhyeon sighs, grabs him, and takes him down with movements completely different from the ones Jongin suggested. He groans into the floor, from the mere impact. Baekhyeon is not actively restraining him.

“That wouldn’t have worked, because I’m smaller than you.”

“Would it work if I did it?” he asks, still muffled. Baekhyeon does not know why he still has not let him go. It is funny to have Jongin squirming under him, perhaps. His hapikido skills are not dead, nor the combat techniques Zitao insisted he learn.

“Let’s try.”

Jongin plays the bad guy from there on, Baekhyeon being the irresistible protagonist. He ends up pinned to the floor by Jongin, as the scenario dictates. He lands soft, held by Jongin’s attentiveness and the cushions randomly littering the place. It is practice for all the fight scenes he has to write, but sometimes he seems to be getting so into it, careless at the details, as he just laughs, driven in immobilizing Baekhyeon just for the hell of it.

He is never successful.  Baekhyeon’s hands are on his sides, palms on his ribs, the pulse on his neck visible as it is thrown back, chuckles spilling past Jongin’s cleaved mouth. His legs are immovable.

“Your hero would be super dead right now,” Baekhyeon says, knocking on Jongin’s chest with his knuckles, before he lifts off him and goes into his room, blinking fast to erase all the imagery of what has just occurred.

 

 

 

The surfaces are dust-free. The smoke of burnt incense is still hazy in the air, faintly fragrant.

There have been plenty of instances of him being gone for bouts way longer than a month, but it was never like this, to be entering his own home and feel like a visitor, a transient stay between too many walls.

What calms him is the muted susurration of Seoul beneath, restless, distinctive, as it wafts and braids with the smoke. Baekhyeon listens to it all night, half-indrawn into slumber.

 

 

 

No one has washed his car. Baekhyeon appraises the dried splatters on it with a raised eyebrow. It looks like a finger painting done with mud, rain and speed. A squall was frothing over the city the last time he had went out with it. It has not been touched since.

As he drives towards the company, he finds that the only thing disquieting him is the safeness he feels inside the car, a seatbelt and walls on all sides. No thrill in this type of commute.

Hence, his mood is slightly dampened as he reaches the building, wordlessly passing through all the public figures drifting about until he can take the corner and fall into his manager’s office. Amber never stops listening to all that rap, and the beat of it carries beyond the door.  He cannot bring it in himself to smile truthfully. His lips superficially tug at the corners.

Baekhyeon is solely here to discuss some finances, something that is of barely any interest to him, but it has to be done. Surely, he was expecting the onslaught of question that Amber launches in once Baekhyeon is seated in front of her desk.  He does not disclose why he is stopping now.

She asks again and again what this hiatus is for. He was soaring, just after the drop of an album, in the middle of a tour. “Let the reporters squirm,” he says.

Amber looks at him weirdly. Playing the press is not big deal, but playing the company is.

“You should relax a bit,” Baekhyeon finally smiles. It is needed to erase the cruel frown gracing her face. “I am freeing you from a bit of stress. I am aware that I can be difficult sometimes. Doing nothing is quite enjoyable. Give it a try.”

He is not under any contract; he is not tied to the company. He is hybrid between an idol and a cultural personality, independent to the point of needing publicity and some time management. Amber can walk out any time too.

Among other publications paving her desk, he sees the magazine issue that is to appear next month, featuring him on the cover. Inside is a generous spread of him; the shoot having taken place in the middle of Bangkok during the wee hours of the morning, when drunken people were still finding their way home. There must be an interview too, although he has no recollection of what was scripted for him to answer with.

The fans will have feed on this. No point in gathering more pity crumbs.

 

 

 

Baekhyeon accompanies Kyeongsu in a stroll through the streets of Hongdae. The stoic little soloist is bundled in a black, long jacket. He looks like a balloon- a nondescript person catching no light and no gazes.

They are both in incognito mode. Kyeongsu is better at it.

They listen to indie bands out on the streets, no amplifiers, dressed sparsely but too high from the thrill of the performance to feel the chilliness. Baekhyeon does not really like this type of music, the vocals seemingly in a quarrel with the instrumentals rather than complementing each other. He is more of an electro fan beyond the classics.

Kyeongsu is all judgemental, even though he is not saying anything. His eyebrows convey it all, along with the small grunts here and there. Baekhyeon giggles at some of his expressions of pure distress, wrought over the collar he has buttoned up way past his chin.

Conversation does not flow between them until Kyeongsu has had his fill of listening to bad music. Then it is just Kyeongsu listing on cravings prior to hopping in front of the first food cart he sees. Ddeokbokki. He has the habit of overeating whenever mildly irked. This does not occur frequently.

They take the stools next to the cooking area, the trays boiling right in front of them as they take off their masks. Baekhyeon’s mouth waters at the smell. The ajumma does not say anything, does not stop her shuffling of the goods, even as they call each other by name, stuffing their faces with too many portions.

Kyeongsu appraises the stack of disposable bowls with a knotty expression. “My manager will be absolutely livid.”

“Is he training you for strip shows now?” Baekhyeon asks. He sips from the little cup of broth, rich and salty. Jongin would like this.

“I think he is, yes.” He looks at Baekhyeon, puzzled. “I am a singer who sings, not a singer who strips for fuck’s sake.”

Baekhyeon attempts to snatch a few pinches at his tummy. It is hard to wrestle his way under all these layers, and Kyeongsu nearly falls off the stool in his effort to get away from Baekhyeon’s pursuit. “I couldn’t grab anything,” he pouts. He has reached his destination. “That’s sad. You have precious organs there. They need the padding.”

Kyeongsu fumbles into his jacket, the amazing labyrinthine depths of it, and stamps the bills on the table. “Damn right they do.”

With a nod, he signals to their four bodyguards to approach.

They turn back to the street, away from the spicy vapours, walking with the stream of people for a while. It is early enough for most loiterers to be sober. No one minds them.  

“Are we not famous enough?” Baekhyeon asks, deciding to tuck the mask in his pocket, letting his face freeze a little. It has been nearly half an hour since they have left the cart.

Then a couple of girls steal gazes at them before whispering between themselves, then some other little groups. Some of them are even pointing. “You’re fucking huge,” Kyeongsu says, as if it is the most obvious thing, and he puts on his mask.

Baekhyeon perhaps is huge, known enough, talented enough, made enough of an indent, a pianist worth remembering, of being the pride of this nation. He is more than someone forgotten in a dusty, gold-plated concert hall, appeasing to snobs. He is someone young, a man liked for his charms, a man who managed to sell glamour to people choking on diamonds.

The corners of his lips burn as they twitch into a smile. It must be from the hot sauce.

“Are you calling me fat?”

Kyeongsu hits him in the shoulder.  

 

 

 

It is morning, too early. Baekhyeon wakes up early these days, like he did when he was young and too eager to start learning each and every sunrise. Now he is awake because he forgot to turn the heating on, again, and his toes are about to fall off. He realizes that he has never noticed the echoes of his penthouse.

He coerces Chanyeol into going out to breakfast at Viva Polo with him in the morning. He is there first, his mother smiling and cuddling him in a booth the moment he steps inside.

She asks all about his wellbeing, all the while her hands massaging his, like she used to when Baekhyeon stared at them with disdain, when they would not satisfy the heights of his imagination. They are just as soft. Baekhyeon does not have to fake his smile.  

When Chanyeol arrives, he leaves a giant peck on Mrs. Park’s cheek. Chanyeol is dressed up all the way, hair combed, and his eye bags a shock of purple in the smoothness of his face. “Being a morning person seems to look worse and worse on you, babe,” Baekhyeon greets once Chanyeol’s mother leaves for the kitchen. Chanyeol groans, looking down at the table like he cannot wait to drop his head on it.

“I’m not a morning person,” Chanyeol says, muffled into another groan.

“I know. I’m sorry I dragged you out at this time.”

Chanyeol looks at him, aiming a glare, but it just does not show. That takes too much effort. “You’re not sorry a _t all.”_

“I am,” he persists, getting closer over the table. Chanyeol’s eyes are still the prettiest eyes he has ever seen. He carries too much in them, reflecting what is inside rather than what it is outside. “A little little bit.” His tongue pokes out, his thumb and forefinger coming together, until they stop short, half a centimetre between them. Chanyeol’s eyes blink, unveiling with a darkening,and  then he blinks again, longer, his eyelashes twitching with the force.

His hand comes over the table too, his own thumb and forefinger over Baekhyeon’s. He shuts them. “Do not be sorry. Not even that much.”

He looks at the clasp. Chanyeol’s big palms over the daintiness of his own, warm and encompassing. It has a tremble, visible from the wrist up. “Okay,” he says, dropping back into his seat.

 

 

 

They cannot eat in peace, for Mrs. Park rushes out of the back room with a heap of old albums, tacky plastic over the clumsy immortalization of their youth. Between stolen bites, Baekhyeon gets to see Chanyeol losing all his teeth, then growing these blinding rows just as he settled into his obsession with puddles and hiking- if walking on the grass instead of the paved alleys in a public park could be considered hiking. The ferret phase is the cutest- Chanyeol tending to a bunch of them, treating them like his kids, giving them supposed pocket money and life advice and trying to teach them to read and write.

The current, grown up Chanyeol next to him squirms in place with embarrassment whilst Mrs. Park gives him the humiliation of his life. Baekhyeon soothes his giant by offering him forkfuls of whatever is on his plate. His stomach will not stop rumbling.

After the daddy Yeol phase is over, Baekhyeon appears in the pictures too, tiny and small-eyed next to Chanyeol. It was Chanyeol who followed him around like a lost puppy though, looking down at Baekhyeon with utmost fascination. Baekhyeon has been mouthy from the very first moment he learned enough words to form a sentence, and Chanyeol found this trait very cool. A whirl of colourful birthdays, the number of candles growing until the cake just did not happen anymore, as they preferred going out with their little gang of colleagues than celebrate at home with the boring parents.

Baekhyeon’s finger stops on a partly ripped picture.  It is their first day of high school, after being miraculously assigned in the same class, grinning from ear to ear, the both them sporting the shaggiest mane of red locks possible. “I can’t believe we did that, and for a whole year,” he voices, grimacing. By the end of it, their hair was so fried that they had to cut it all off. That summer had seen a lot of their scalp.

Mrs. Park finally leaves them alone as the restaurant begin filling. Chanyeol sighs, deflating, a man freed of anguish. Baekhyeon laughs at him, like the good friend that he is, and starts mixing the stew in his bowl. It has gone partially cold. Chanyeol dislikes cold foods.

Sauce brims over his lips when he is done, having wolfed it down in a few blinks. He was definitely starving. Baekhyeon would not be surprised to hear that he has had his last proper meal a morning ago.

He only looks sated after Baekhyeon pushes towards him the rest of his plate, reclining with a pleased grin, a well-fed puppy, hands cradling the soft distension of his stomach. Mrs. Park’s cooking has this effect. Lazily, he peeps at the sole picture resting on the table. 

Chemically fired hair or not, that was still one of the best years of their life.

Baekhyeon stares at it too, and slowly, with contemplation, his gaze lifts to meet Chanyeol’s. His expression is just as wicked.

“You’re free this afternoon.”

Chanyeol’s eyes dilate. He was not expecting for Baekhyeon’s proposition. Half his face twists in horror, whilst the other half belatedly caves into excitement. “I am free this afternoon.”

 

 

 

This afternoon, Baekhyeon jumps up and down next to Chanyeol, both of them facing the mirror. “You’re a clown! Again! And I’m a clown! Again!” he squeals, not minding the watching of the famous patrons in the salon as he gets on his tiptoes to run a hand through Chanyeol’s hair and the other through his own.  

He cannot stop doing it, even while Chanyeol is driving. He looks kind of crazy, a by-product of foolish bravery. It suits him. This is the Chanyeol he was aforetime, before adulthood washed away most of his spark.

“If Tiffany kicks you out,” he whispers, still fingering the strands, “you’re welcome on my couch.”

“Your couch sucks,” Chanyeol says.

“I have like ten couches.”

“All of them suck.”

“Fine, my bed then. No clothes allowed in it though.”

 

 

 

He does not last as long as he had planned.

Two days later he finds a ticket to his last concert fallen behind a dresser; the only thing wearing dust in the whole home. He had meant to give it to someone, someone he was giddy for- possibly a date, at least a sexual interest if not a romantic one. At that time, he did not know this would be the last one.

Baekhyeon cannot even recall their face.

He leaves the ticket in a street trash bin. A few seconds later someone kills their cigarette on it, leaving ash over everything Baekhyeon’s built.

 

 

The row of the ‘We’ve the state’ complex is too nice, he thinks yet again as it comes into view. Bucheon, of all places, was granted such investment, such luxury. It is nothing but an outcast of a big city.

Then Baekhyeon remembers that everyone yearns to thrive, no matter how meagre, just like he did.

 

 

 

The tune of the door keypad has been disabled a while ago- Baekhyeon could not stand it. So nothing announces Jongin of him entering the apartment. There have been occasions of him being scared out of his own slippers by Baekhyeon’s presence, having assumed he was still out. His glasses once flew off.

This time, Baekhyeon marches directly to his room to say hi. One step to the threshold, he finds himself grabbed and slammed, albeit gently, into the wall right next to the door. His shoulders are secured to the wall, knees pressing in the middle of his thighs. Baekhyeon has no room to thrash.

“Was that smooth enough?” Jongin asks, eager, and his mouth tugs, too full and too pink and Baekhyeon _knows_ that he is breathing over it.

“You forgot to knee me in the stomach, but otherwise yes, that was pretty good.” Baekhyeon’s heart thumps fitfully from the suddenness. Maybe his words came out as less assuring.

His hands run down Baekhyeon’s chest, straightening the rumple of the clothes he nearly torn. “Welcome back, Mister Superstar,” he says, warm, and Baekhyeon feels truly welcomed.

 

 

 

Baekhyeon rides for four hours. He has missed his Aeri, so he indulges, taking a twisted route, passing through the narrowest of alleys.

Engine oil lies darkly under his fingernails. Scratches run parallel the nail beds where the skin is vulnerable. He has had to clean a few components, then oil them again. His hands never felt so raw and battered. An exhilarating tingle runs through them.

His mood plummets as he steps inside, only to spot Jongin on the floor drinking something from a ceramic bowl and laughing at the TV. A show about autopsies is playing. Baekhyeon sees an empty makgeolli bottle under the table. Another one rolls back and forth under Jongin’s foot, perhaps still full.

A saw cuts a ribcage open, and Jongin laughs again, reaching for a bite of some cake. One of kimchi follows, with the same fork, cream left on red spice. 

Baekhyeon approaches with caution. Jongin’s whole state speaks of fragility. Baekhyeon’s intrusion may be unwanted.

“Hyeong,” Jongin mumbles then, and his gaze snaps right up at Baekhyeon. Pale ochre projects on his face from the screen- a close up of the back of the corpse. His smile turns lazy, comfortable, shadows thin. He pats he place next to him.

Baekhyeon does sit, the creaking of his clothes sounding like unhinged bones. Jongin noses into him, sniffing audibly. “This suits you better than the bergamot,” he says, and Baekhyeon feels the bite of alcohol being pressed into his cheek. “How cool it is of you to wear gasoline instead of cologne like all of us mere mortals.”

Commercials are on. Finally enough brightness for Baekhyeon to distinguish anything on his face. He is just drunk, eyes glassy and lips a bitten mess. As colours flash across his features, it looks all the more woeful. He was fine when Baekhyeon left.

“What’s the occasion?” Baekhyeon asks.

“Today’s our anniversary!” he slurs, throwing his arms in the air in celebration. They fall on the bowl. He brings it in to lick the rim, where a droplet was running down. “I mean, Sujeong and I have six years today. I mean, if she was still around? Still mine? But she isn’t, and I’m too drunk to use tenses properly.”

Baekhyeon feels inutile. He has no idea how to soothe Jongin’s ache- there are no Band-Aids for such things. He cannot really relate to the feeling either. He has never lost anyone; he has never had anyone to lose.

“Hey,” Jongin calls, and he looks over, bypassing the devastation of Jongin’s visage to the fork now pressed to his lips. “New recipe. Matcha. Try it.”

He has to give in to the insistent push of the prongs. The sweet sponge dissolves in his mouth, cream overwhelming the delicacy of the green tea. It is perfect, and he finds himself grinning despite the grimness of the atmosphere.

Jongin grins too. “The red is nice,” he says, eyes on Baekhyeon’s hair, before popping the fork in his mouth, licking whatever Baekhyeon did not. “Sujeong looked amazing with red hair.”

Then the show begins again, where it left off with some organ harvesting. Baekhyeon only focuses enough to remark that this is a car crash related death, before his attention goes back to Jongin. He is not laughing anymore. His tongue just dips in the brimming bowl of makgeolli every few seconds, not fazed the slightest by the carnage in front of him.

He is not really drunk, Baekhyeon soon realizes. It is just heartache peaking with a nudge from alcohol, the dense lacquer of sadness thick over his eyes.

Jongin does not elaborate, does not offer context, but the word Sujeong would be whispered here and there with different intonations, either breathy or angered. Baekhyeon lets him be; just feeding some snacks between every sips of makgeolli.

The show is over. The bottle is empty. “I can’t stop thinking about her. I can’t stop missing her,” he says in a drawl. It is as if he is finally noticing the cause of his throes. “Bet this is some unrequited longing. Bet she does not give a fuck about my sorry ass anymore.”

He looks on the verge of passing out, not even bothering to open his eyes after the last blink. Baekhyeon gets up, taking Jongin along as he drags him to his room. He falls on the bed with a groan, sounding watery as he has to swallow a mouthful of saliva. “I have way more ass than her though.” He shuffles around, hands going underneath himself as he grabs his cheeks. “Definitely more ass. Why does not she want my ass back? My ass is so- ”he does not finish. His palms wiggle over the mounds a bit more before he drifts off.

Baekhyeon leaves a bottle of water on his nightstand- not a glass; he always knocks stuff off in his sleep.

 

 

 

Jongin has not really grieved so far. It has just been the chase of exploiting the feeling, but the cracks have never settled back in place.

It has begun now. Jongin is never still, never writing, never doing anything but watching massacres. His phone never leaves his hands either, and Baekhyeon only peeks enough to discern that he is chatting with someone. He rarely sees any bubbles on the left side.

Baekhyeon wants to help, wants to be able to do something. At this age, he has had no time to break any hearts; all he could do was memorize Liszt until the day bled into the night.

But what he can do is risk his life and go out to buy Jongin’s favourite snacks.

 

 

 

A week later his disposition shifts. He rises early, angry, quarrelling with pots, with the washing machine, with the streak of motor oil Baekhyeon accidentally smeared on the wall by the door. By afternoon, he is weepy, twisting on the couch as he reads some manga. He pokes at Baekhyeon too, mostly inquiring about the celebrity life. Baekhyeon lets him read through his fan mail and the comments on his social media.

 _Mozart would cream himself for you_ ,  reads a comment, and Jongin laughs so hard that his jaw pops out of the socket.

It is a nice distraction, even if it is a façade, a coping for distress. Because Baekhyeon can only leave the house when it is dark, now that his motorcycle is recognizable.  He would rather have Jongin jumping him with broomsticks than by smothered by silence as he tries not to listen to symphonies, not to tap his foot, not to imagine music anymore.

They start going out at the same time, just as plum spills over the sky, Baekhyeon taking the elevator a story lower to the parking lot. Jongin is bundled in knitted fabrics, colourful and thick, whilst Baekhyeon is all pitch black leather.

Jongin is back at 10 on the dot every night. Baekhyeon makes it at 9.

“I think I’ve just hired myself at a café,” he says as he rushes straight into the bathroom, just as Baekhyeon is brushing his teeth. He takes a ribbon of toilet paper and blows his nose loudly, nearly loosing half a lung. He smells of oncoming winter. “Not very hired. Just a little.”

Baekhyeon spits out the toothpaste. “Are you hired or not?”

“I am. For four hours a day, three days a week.”

Four hours of pleasing someone else. Being bossed around a little will do him good.

“Nice, you’ve been pickling in this apartment for too long.” Baekhyeon pats his shoulder on the way out.

 

 

 

While Jongin is gone, Baekhyeon plays all kinds of games. He never really gets into them, never found that yank of rivalry, of wanting to beat a score. But it is a gratifying pastime, so he gets to chitchat with Jongin once he comes home at eight, flashing a wine-stained smile.

He has read all of Jongin’s books in the meantime. They are all heavily underlined, entire pages stained blue, comments littering each sliver of blank space. Surprisingly, he has no copies of his own publications lying around. Baekhyeon abstains from purchasing them- it would feel like breaching some sort of agreements now that they are close, and that would disrupt the slightly precarious camaraderie they have fallen into. 

Baekhyeon watches Jongin frantically search for the mate of the one sock he is already wearing. He is so late right now, so Baekhyeon just throws him a pair of his own. He is just fiddling with the buttons of his parka when he suddenly looks at Baekhyeon, the urgency gone. “Wanna come along?”

Baekhyeon agrees to it in a heartbeat, with Jongin throwing clothes at him from the closet as he puts them on with maximum efficiency. They pant as they run down the street to the café, fast enough that nobody has the time to identify Baekhyeon. When they burst through the door of the cafe, they are breathing hard, and Jongin starts chuckling. Baekhyeon does too, even as he crouches, hands on his knees. Then Jongin is swept away from him, and he is left to appraise the café.

It is fancy, filled with intricate tapestry and dark maroon furniture. The space is open; the tables close together while still giving off the vibe of intimacy. Coffee and orange rind is fragrant in the air. It is totally the kind place to offer a glass of wine next to that tart.

The far wall hosts a bookcase up to the ceiling. There is no room to fit another spine.

He nears the counter, all of it strewn high with small jars filled with tea and flowers. Light filters through them like it would through stained glass. The girl behind the register looks at him with a dazzling smile, according to the policy, before it fades, the curvature migrating to her eyes. Baekhyeon looks past her, where Jongin is at the far back still buttoning his shirt as he bows repeatedly to someone, patting his flushed cheeks from the cold, lips half into a pout and half into a smirk. He is just charming his way out of being scolded. Baekhyeon titters- it is such a Jongin thing to do.

“What can I get you?” the girl asks. Her voice is high, the seething of a deflating balloon. She is extremely beautiful with feminine features and a slightly tomboyish demeanour. _Taeyeon_ , the nametag reads. Jongin had mentioned her.

“Coffee,” he decides. He really has not had any good stuff in a while. His answer is inexplicit, for she beings inquiring details to his order, but then Jongin is coming forward, his uniform still messy, donning the triumphant grin of someone who just escaped the claws of death.

“I’ll do it. I know what he wants.” Then he leans over the counter to whisper to Baekhyeon, “I’ve just learned how to use this apparatus.” His head shortly jerks in the direction of the espresso machine. “Trust me, hyeong.”

Baekhyeon cannot say no to that. He turns back to Taeyeon, her face being even more surprised, and slides his card forward. She asks for one more signature beside the needed one.

He wanders in the café, choosing one of the small ornate futons perpendicular to the bookcase. The customers are scarce- three couples, a lone young woman, a lone elderly man. No one pays him any mind.

The first book that he sees is an old one, yellow, the print discoloured, a lot of Hanja. He snaps a picture of the cover, sending it to Chanyeol. It is all reflex by now.

Baekhyeon finds himself drawn to the language just two sentences in. It is archaic, satiric, a refreshing blend. He does not realize that someone has been sitting in front of him until he hears the scratch of unpolished china on buffed wood. Jongin’s fingers on the saucer- bronze on sterile white.

He puts the book down before considering the black liquid with suspicion. Jongin looks at him with some unfathomable hopefulness, apprehension and amusement all rolled in the slant of his eyebrows.

Baekhyeon takes a sip.

“Is it terrible?” Jongin asks. He abominates coffee.

Baekhyeon’s tongue recoils from delectation, searching fanatically for more. “It is absolutely terrible just right.”

Jongin’s response is instantaneous, a shimmy of his sips, all festive, and Baekhyeon thinks that this is the first time he sees how pure, unadulterated joy looks on Jongin. He is all healed, for a split second, and it is bright and blazing and Baekhyeon has to look away.

He then disappears to tend to the tables, leaving Baekhyeon with his coffee and his book. All it takes is for Jongin to throw him a faint grin over his shoulder as he takes the order from a nearby table for Baekhyeon to know that he will be coming here a lot from now on. 

 

 

 

It is liberating to step down from the protagonist role, to go away into an imaginary life for a few hours at dusk. He holes himself in a cranny of the café, little paper cuts accumulating on the pads of his fingers, stinging as they touch the scalding walls of the coffee cup.

He drinks two, before Jongin is untying his apron and coming to fetch him, a droopy smile on his lips as he asks, “What are you reading?”

Then they would both stroll through the chilly air back home, Baekhyeon always half-hidden behind Jongin as he says this and that regarding the story of the current book. Jongin would reword it, absently, as he twirls between the aisles of the tiny supermarket next to their building, putting stuff in the basket Baekhyeon is holding.

At home, they cook together, something probably unhealthy but delicious. Baekhyeon is the one washing the dishes, for Jongin is already yawning over the stove as he makes himself an enormous pot of black tea. He is tired, and he wants to write. Wasting energy on dish washing is not an option. He leaves Baekhyeon with them, padding out of the kitchen with the teapot and a tiny pat on Baekhyeon’s butt.

 

 

 

At night, he does not toss for hours in his bed before he falls asleep.

Before, he had been plagued by music, notes coming together in disarray, a melody unsettled between his ears, and he would correct it, compose it mentally, polishing and polishing until the sun was raising and his face was taut from the yank of irritation. It was something forced- an inoculated necessity. His next album has to have a spectacular central piece.

But there will be no next album.

So now, all he thinks about is snippets of the story he has read today, what he will do tomorrow. Often he will be stretching in bed, poses askew from the give of the mattress, as he excitedly chats with Kyeongsu or Chanyeol or both of them, immersing himself in dry humour and bickering until his cheeks hurt from smiling.

 

 

 

To Kyeongsu: _Im becoming so enlightened. u should read too, to keep the approaching dementia at bay._

From Kyeongsu: _r u looking at a hot guy right now?_

“How did he know?” Baekhyeon whispers to himself. Only the bookcases around hear him.

 _The sun doesn’t even compare_ , he sends the text. He looks ahead, then back down and types another one. _Omg omg he’s wearing this tiny-ass apron._

From Kyeongsu: _Rip you_

It is better that Baekhyeon glares down at his phone than follow the shimmy of Jongin’s hips behind that poor excuse of a garment.

 _U suck, kyeong-alzheimer-su_

 

 

 

It is not the first time for this to happen, but only now does Baekhyeon feel affected by it. It is too soon, and too powerful. This sequence becomes more and more noticeable, Baekhyeon keen on noticing it.

One minute Jongin is having his laptop on the edge of the couch, turned over, and then there is a sigh and the click of the lid closing. The patter of his feet as he walks to his room, then rustles, the soft creaking of mattress springs, Jongin’s breathing tinting the quiet air. He moans softly, just started sounds that peter before they get the chance to climax. He seems intent to keep quiet, even as it is something quick, a hastiness to the sounds that speaks of a long while of being riled up, rather than seeking some brief mediocre relief along the way. There is the thump of his hips bouncing off the mattress as if they are pushing greedily into the tugging of his palms.

Baekhyeon has a moment when he wants to curse his perfect hearing, and how much he longs for melodies, given he is so pleased with what Jongin is offering him.

There is nothing but silence when he comes; all the more shocking smack in the middle of the rustle he has provoked.

Then the key tapping resumes, so fast that it is monotonous, and Baekhyeon falls asleep to it.

He wakes at the crack of dawn to tug over himself the blanket that has fallen off, and still, the sound of tapping has not ceased.

 

 

 

Jongdae approaches with a lag to his steps. His head is lowered, chin into his chest, eyes probably closed. The weight of the backpack drags his shoulders down.

When he sees Baekhyeon at the entrance of his building he seems to sober up a bit, kitty-curls appearing at the corners of his mouth. It is deep into the night and he is only now coming back from hagwon.

Baekhyeon pats the seat of the motorcycle, letting Jongdae climb on it. “I’ll let you ride it after you pass sooneung,” he says. His bloodshot eyes light up, and it seems off, a sparkle in a pool of exhaustion.

The debris of his own words starts tasting tart in his mouth. Chances are he will be dead before that, maybe the motorcycle coming along with him. Promises. He should not be making these anymore. They will be left unfulfilled.

But Jongdae does not know that. He still chats about random stuff that happened at school, which are some super boring things, so he complains about them all whiny and pouty. He wants to ask Baekhyeon to take him on a ride right now. Baekhyeon denies him; for he is sure he will fall asleep on his back and will fall off. Instead, he offers him a bag with baked goods from Jongin’s café, and insists that he has some right now. He will tumble right into bed as soon as he gets home, the ache of an empty stomach forgotten. Baekhyeon sends him up with a thick wad of pocket money.

 

 

 

The malodour of burnt rubber always takes him back to the day he had felt the first pains. Fatigue, irritability, all that he had tried to fight with vitamins, painkillers, until it became too much and  he had to cancel a concert.

At the clinic, he left four autographs behind and took with him a death sentence.

 

 

 

Baekhyeon fanboys over Jongin’s- Kai’s- books to Chanyeol. There are so many quotes and funny phrases and some amazing paragraphs. He has never been one to read out of sheer like for it, rather it was a means of filling idle time. He sends picture after picture, and Chanyeol replies with audio notes, snippets of whatever he is working on in the studio.

Whenever Jongin passes by the corner of the café he is hiding in, Baekhyeon covers the book in his hands with another one. Baekhyeon sends him a smile and an encouraging fist.

 

 

 

Baekhyeon meets Sehun after he wakes up from a nap, padding to the kitchen while rubbing at his eyes. He did not even bother pulling up his pants from where they have slid low on his hips from the tossing. He collides with a sturdy back, ricocheting with a little “Ow.”

As his vision clears, he appraises the man who has turned. His face has crisp features, a narrow mouth. His ridiculous height culminates in a mop of silky blond hair.

He can be no one else other than Sehun. Sehun seems to know who he is too. So he just offers a nod, not really a bow, as he rounds the counter to reach for some water.  

Before he can ask is Sehun wants some too, his gaze falls to the wrinkled papers laid out on the kitchen island. It was just two test results that he had thrown away, some delayed biopsies that came in the mail. He had binned them haphazardly, in a hurry to reach Jongdae and give him a ride to school like he vouched. They have his name all over them.

There are other pieces of trash on the table. A few wrappers, and a few crumpled neon-coloured paper squares.

“Did you find it?” Jongin says from his room, and he says it quietly, conversational, too absorbed in his writing. Then he catches himself and asks again, louder.

“I did,” Sehun replies, eyes drilling into Baekhyeon’s.  A green square is in his hand. On it, the name of one of Jongin’s current side characters is written, along with a number. It is a shoe size.

He pivots, traipsing towards Jongin’s room. He has the gait of someone too in tune with their own body.

“Hug, hug,” Jongin whines, lifting from his seated position with a wince. Baekhyeon sees it all from this angle. Sehun’s impassive face cracking as Jongin drapes himself over him, stretching up on his tip toes. Sehun’s arms wind around him too, and Baekhyeon does not hear it, but the flutter of a giggle appears to be quivering in their pressed chests.

Sehun lets him go, and Jongin melts right back into the activity he was engaged in.

Baekhyeon’s mouth is numb from the freezing cold water. Gooseflesh erupts on his skin, maybe from the intense stare Sehun is giving him. It is some form of pity, the belittling kind.

He does not say anything to him, however, mouth thinned as he gathers all the papers. He rips them, balls them, and puts them in the pocket of his jacket instead of the bin. Then his shoes are on and the door is closing after him.

Baekhyeon has never choked on silence. It washes pleasure down his throat, an ache that does not acknowledge itself, a feeling to be addicted to, once insensate enough to claw at walls out of ennui, or despair.

 

 

 

Come morning, Baekhyeon bags all the wristwatches he has. They are not many, not here, few have been brought from Seoul.

They are expensive, stupidly so. Most are worth more than the tuition he did not sleep to pay for. Now they are just reminders of unnecessary pain.

He leaves the bag at the foot of the dumpster outside the building.

 

 

 

Baekhyeon enters the café at half past six. He has not come with Jongin today- he has been on a ride to Incheon, just to test the new gear he has bought. He had felt no nippiness.

Does not mean that he does not revel in the warmth from inside, thick with aromas. Jongin is nowhere to be seen- just Taeyeon arranging the sweets display. From one of the tables in the back, he picks up a gasp, a pair of eyes boring into his nape. No footsteps. It is just a normal fan, not a crazy one.

Jongin pops up out of nowhere, as if he was crouching behind the counter, a marker in his mouth. He is holding a piece of paper that he sticks with a two Apeach stickers to the cash register. Part time employee wanted. Jongin’s cutely messy handwriting ends with a winking emoticon.

Jongin’s tongue pokes between his lips, beside the marker, as he adjusts the ad so that it will stay straight.

Baekhyeon is moving before he knows it, approaching the student who is studying next to the windows, asking her for a piece of paper, a small, pleading grin on his lips. She scrambles for it at one, eyes filled with adulation as he thanks her.

Jongin’s greeting dies in his throat as Baekhyeon unceremoniously snatches the marker away from him. He scrawls his name on the paper, his experience, and in the corner draws a half-assed representation of his face. “I’m applying,” he says, and Jongin, who has been stating at him all along, breaks into a chuckle.

 

 

 

“I’m here to interview for the vacant position,” Baekhyeon voices, standing straight in the office. Jongin, behind him, still has not stopped chuckling.

The owner is a small man, cheeks round. He looks like a schoolboy with a too talented frown. He assesses Baekhyeon with a straight face, looking him up and down. Baekhyeon is indeed dressed in all leather, the whole deal- tall collar and gloves, hair an untamed orangey chaos from the helmet. He inches closer, to put the piece of paper on the desk in front of the man. On the nameplate it says _CEO Kim Junmyeon_.  

“But,” he says, eyeing the paper for just a second. “You’re….Byeon Baekhyeon?” he croaks.

“Yes, he’s the piano superstar,” Jongin bursts, too bold, before he remembers that he is talking to his boss. Baekhyeon can do nothing really but laugh. Jongin is glad that he is here with him.

“I’ve worked in the industry before. I have two years of experience. Please give me a chance,” Baekhyeon says, cheery as a sparrow. Junmyeon continues surveying the resume for a while, dumbfounded. His frown deepens, climaxing into a coil that seems rather painful. He sighs all of a sudden, regarding Baekhyeon. “Okay, you’re in.”  

As they leave the office, Jongin’s hip knocks into his. Baekhyeon rebounds from the force, nearly falling in a heap of giggles. “You’re finally de-pickling too.”

 

 

 

His hips do not fill the apron as nicely as Jongin’s do, but he does get his fair trade of looks as well. It is nice to work like this, to know that at four on the dot he will be all dolled up, catering to customers, mindless and satisfying.

He is asked to take selcas with a few people, and he complies easily. A peace sign along his jaw, the cheek of a delighted fan pressed against his. Others would be more daring, would demand hugs, kisses, tug at his clothes. Then there are the shy ones who simply inquiring if he is tired, is he has eaten, when he is coming back.

The sales grow. The café is nearly always full during his and Jongin’s shift, waiters swarming frantically to keep peace. Junmyeon’s eyes glow whenever he sees the sales report.

But then there will be quiescence, late afternoons, when the calm and chaos combine and he has time to interact with Jongin, to listen to his commentary, sneaky nothings that he manages to extract from the customers. Baekhyeon wonders if it is the scent of orange rind that brings him so much contentedness, or the breathy whispers Jongin leaves by his ear as he twirls around, a decanter in his hand, promising him a night of watching cartoons on the couch.  

 

 

 

Chanyeol sends him short videos of his new group. The girls are falling over themselves in the practice room, tangled in a very jumpy choreography. Chanyeol is still so proud of them. Baekhyeon can hear his cheering behind the camera. He wants all five of them to shine. This is the first group that is entirely under his guidance, that he is the sole producer of.

In the background, the song can be heard, then Chanyeol’s gruff voice coming over the receiver. “This is tiring. I can’t keep up with them,” he mutters.

Baekhyeon laughs. He did catch Chanyeol’s reflection in the mirror, gawkily trying to follow along. Sehun’s silhouette was somewhere around there too. “Well, you tried. And you’re already married, so you do not need to seduce anyone anymore.”

He chuckles. Baekhyeon notices it is a bit runny. Perhaps he has caught a cold. His immune system is comically incompetent.

“I never knew how much I liked cheesecake,” Baekhyeon says, dipping his fork again in the last slice he saved from the display. “Cheesecake is amazing. Jongin makes amazing cake. And Jongin himself is amazing.”

“Are you drunk?” Chanyeol queries as Baekhyeon’s own words diffuse into twitters.

“Possibly. This cake is so good. I could be drunk on goodness.” His tongue tickles from the mild sourness of the cream cheese.

“Are you,” Chanyeol begins. Baekhyeon can barely hear him over the smacking of his mouth. “Is everything okay?”

The texture of the crust in his mouth is different suddenly. Maybe he just reached a part where the cream soaked through. “Yes,” Baekhyeon says. “Believe me. Yes.”  

 

 

 

Amber calls him incessantly. The news is all over the place: Baekhyeon is wiping tables now.

Baekhyeon accepts a call at last. “It’s exposure,” he reasons. There is a burn on his wrist from where he has misused the steam wand. “All exposure is good exposure.” The motto of all starving artists. He never got to be one.

She finally seems to calm a little. “This may do you good when you come back. Make sure to win as many hearts as possible.”

Amber’s anger has always been the distanced kind, projective- she is mad at him giving up, and wasting his potential. Something is being kept from her. And this, Baekhyeon thinks yet again, is the purest form of respect he will ever receive.

 

 

 

They are the ones closing the shop tonight. Just a yellow light over the tea shelves, a red one over the main counter.

Jongin fiddles with the security system before he is taking in a deep, motivational breath and stepping outside. Baekhyeon feels the slap of the coldness too, his whole body constricting. Jongin is then impulsively reaching for his arm- two fingers and his thumb around the wrist, directly on the skin- and yanking him along into a jog. He does not let go, even as they stumble into one another, the white clouds of their puffing breaths intertwining and blinding them both.

One turn and one block away, when their legs are burning and they are sweating under their coats but still _freezing_ , Baekhyeon asks Jongin. “What are you suffering this for?”

Jongin is still panting, looking from left to right. They are on a shortcut now, the alley narrow and poorly lit. No human in sight. Jongin chuckles, dense alabaster curls from his mouth. “It clears my mind. And I can shamelessly ogle humans. And I hate coffee. I’m bound to be good at doing it.”

His hand drips from the wrist to Baekhyeon’s palm, glove on glove. He grabs tight. “You?” Jongin asks, a smile, then he picks up the pace, sprinting. The ground is iced over, his heart has gone crazy, and he cannot tell if he even has a pair of lips anymore. Jongin will not let him lag behind.

Jongin peeks in disdain at the entrance to their building. The light is stunning. Baekhyeon feels the blunt waves of pain at the back of his skull.

In the elevator, Jongin lets go. They see their reflection in the closed door, distorted on sanded metal, smudges of red on their faces. It is finally warm enough to feel something.

His chest has no chance to calm down, for Jongin begins laughing, these little deep huffs, and Baekhyeon follows too. He can see the square stretch of his mouth, and Jongin’s triangular one, blinding, and they just crumble into one another until the elevator dings.

“And for moments like these,” Jongin says, high with ebbing mirth. His shoulder scrapes by Baekhyeon’s; gazing down at him with a look so sunny that Baekhyeon feels something inside him melting.

“Yeah,” he agrees lightly. This is what he is living for.

 

 

Baekhyeon does not have to know her to recognize that the woman Jongin is fixating on is Sujeong, the rooster.  Jongin’s eyes widened, his hand stalling on the rug he was using to wipe the counter. A tremble runs through his body, otherwise petrified.

It occurs to Baekhyeon that he never talks about her anymore, he does not know whether they have completely cut contact of if there is still a text here and there. It is unsettling for Baekhyeon to have such a close relationship with Jongin and to be unaware of of something that is affecting him so much. Perchance, their proximity has a limited depth, and an endless scope.

Baekhyeon cannot go, for he is stuck mixing drinks, and Taeyeon is on too many tables already. Jongin’s nervous mannerisms are few and refined, trivial angle changes on his visage. It is just a bite of his lip, a flash of white over the pink, before he is plastering a grin of his face, counterfeit, rounding the counter and marching towards her.

She is with a friend, who greets him first, jubilant surprise all over the lustre of her face. She is short haired, and blonde, her cheeks high and full. Jongin interacts with her rather than with Sujeong, whose reaction at seeing him is similar to his.

Baekhyeon does not hear what they are talking about, but the blonde laughs, something gruff and homely, and it infects Jongin too, a little. They look close- the type of buddies to only see each other once a year and cram so much joy in it that there is no need to do it again until next fall.

He does not exchange a word with Sujeong. He puts her drink on the table with a curt little bow and never glances at her again until they are gone.

 

 

 

For the rest of their shift, Jongin offers to the customers that vacant simper Baekhyeon had seen at the beginning. He knows it is bad when the tiny block notes he is always carrying in his apron pocket is left under the bar counter. It is only his third week working here and he has already burned through six of these.

So Baekhyeon tries something, putting his hand on Jongin’s arm as soon as they are out the back door and steering him in the opposite direction of their home. He is bundled beyond recognition- nobody hinders their journey through the typical throngs of late afternoon. It is short too, Jongin silent and pliant next to him, until the concert hall of the city comes into view.

Last he had heard it, Bucheon had a decent orchestra, good enough to spur him into devoting himself to music.

He is let in easily- there will be no show today- the lone guard in the building gasping as he sees him, then ushering them inside. They get the pleasure of walking through all the lights as they turn on along the corridors.

More than anything, it is weird to have Jongin following him, not a question asked, as if he is not in command of his body anymore. But the moment he steps inside the dingy theatre he seems to be coming back to himself, head lifting to take in his surroundings. They walk through a few more rooms- the piano is not on the stage, of is not its default location. It is placed in a storage room along with a few other heavy-duty instruments.

Jongin sits on a stack of broken chairs as Baekhyeon settles on the bench.

“I do not know how else to make it better,” Baekhyeon says. And he realizes now, with the faint fragrance of moss dense in the air, that he is apprehensive, because this is so _lame_. How can a song ever patch up the broken walls of Jongin’s heart. It is too late to back off now, when Jongin looks at him with a kind of hopeful boredom. He will have to blindly believe on the countless confessions he has gotten about what his music can make people feel. And for the first time, he feels ashamed that this is the only thing he is good at- a piano and nothing else. “Please stop me if I’m failing,” Baekhyeon finishes, raising the lid.

Then Baekhyeon plays his little heart out. Maybe it is all the music he could not stop thinking about, all the tunes inspired by the things Jongin mouths, sentences in an unseen universe, giggles to unarticulated tumults. He loses himself in it, just as he should, home, ultimate comfort. The rush of letting it all spill, ardent rivulets over the keys, as if slipping between his fingers, saying whatever his mind cannot.

“You didn’t stop me,” Baekhyeon says, prematurely. His last two notes are still drifting, held into the air. His heart is pounding, loud and demanding. Just like after his first ever solo concert, a freebie populated by bored elderlies. At that time too, he had expected to be out of the bubble and to see half the hall gone, so he is surprised just the same to look to his side and for Jongin to still be there, wearing an expression that Baekhyeon cannot even begin to comprehend. It seems to still be switching, unsure, maddened.

“I see now, why you’re so famous,” Jongin croaks, and his voice too is different. A contrabass and feathers. His eyes have never been so rapt on Baekhyeon. He is looking at him like he sees just him, raw and pulsing. Perhaps this is a facet so ingrained within Baekhyeon that it is off to Jongin to not know this part of him. “You just made me breathe.”

In any other context, from anyone else, that would sound like gibberish, or sarcasm, even satire. But this is Jongin, and Jongin never disregards a thing.

“Why did she leave you?” Baekhyeon asks into the fallen silence, sober of his musical trance. The acoustics of this theatre is worse than he would like, but Jongin’s voice carries all the same, amplified by the hollow of his chest.

“She found someone better.”

Baekhyeon smiles. “I believe that is quite hard.”

Jongin smiles too. Not vacant, from Baekhyeon’s compliment. “She’s a resourceful one.” His gaze lowers, and he seems to be thinking, frantic. Perhaps he had wanted to reply with this for a while. “She said I was never there anymore. She said I was just seeking to _experience_ her, so I’d have something to write about. She said that she believes that I never really loved her. I only liked picking apart the guts of this love. Mechanics. Not me dreaming of a lifetime with her, but me just having her by my side so I never stop dreaming.”

He laughs then, self-deprecating. “You know what I was thinking when she said all of this? That she was beautiful. She is beautiful. Even sadness looked good on her. Her eyes are a warm brown, did you notice? It was absolutely wonderful on the backdrop of her red rimmed eyes. And even when her tristesse was so obvious, wanting me to soothe it so much, all that went through my head was wow, so this is how a fight between lovers feels like. I was actually _giddy_ because I got to feel this.” His grin turns maniac before it collapses altogether. That memory, then the consequence. “I would leave me too, if I was her. Someone better than me is very easy to find.”

Out of all the things Baekhyeon could reply with: to deny, to reason that there is no way that could be the case. But what does Baekhyeon know; he is just the new flatmate.

“For how long have you been telling this to yourself?” Baekhyeon settles on.

“Since that Thursday at 8:22.”

“It’s been three months since then.”

Jongin’s gaze snaps to him then, all wistful and heavy. “Only three? It feels like an era.”

“Jongin, you do not need to atone for anything. She was picking _your_ love apart. Only yours looks like chicken scratch on the corners of receipts.”

Jongin has a while before he starts grinning. “You sound as if you’ve been reading my stuff.”

“It’s _everywhere_. I found a snippet of dialogue on toilet paper last night.”

Jongin’s eyes enlarge. “So that’s where I put it! Did you…did you use it?”

Well, it _was_ on the last few squares of the last roll. “I…uhm. Yes.”

Jongin deflates.

“I’ll play it better?” he offers, already twisting towards the piano.

“Play it better, okay,” Jongin says, as if it is a legitimate payback.

And so Baekhyeon does.

 

 

 

They do not walk home together all the way. Halfway through, Jongin gets a text. He sends a few replies, then he is stopping Baekhyeon and telling him that he will go meet up with Sehun. His mood is definitely lighter, but not quite there.

 

 

 

Knocks on the wood of the door, small, unmeaning. Then Jongin stumbles in, shaking vigorously one foot until his shoe flies off. It hits the wall, leaving a patterned imprint. He is wearing different clothes, loose on his frame. Sehun’s, Baekhyeon guesses.

He is drunk; his neck is littered with bruises and his lips puffy, overripe cherry in colour.

“Oh, hi, hyeong,” Jongin says, eyes mostly closed, but his lips stretch- a bit, as if careful to their bruising, a hand up and waving at him. Baekhyeon is seated at the kitchen island, drinking some tea.

“There is still a gaping hole in your chest,” Baekhyeon says. Even through the tight rift of his lids, it is obvious. That look of vacancy. It never left.

Jongin bites his lip- it draws blood, that thinned the expanse is- and then strains the sides of his leather jacket over himself. “At least it is not raining through it anymore.”

Baekhyeon slides his cup over to him, still hot enough to warm him up and soothe the upcoming hangover. He downs it swiftly. “Thanks, hyeong.” Florid liquid dribbles down his chin.

Then he is padding away, a stumble here and there, a hiccup before he collapses into bed.

 Baekhyeon sees the faint smudge of lipstick left on the rim of the cup- it is not the blood- greasy, pink, and bewitching, unlike the neutral balm Jongin is always applying. It is now that Baekhyeon feels a pang through his gut that is not from the cancer.

 

 

 

Baekhyeon idles inside the clinic a bit more, compressing the pad to the inside of his elbow. His veins are thin, the liquid in them abnormally watery. If he lessens the pressure, coral will be dripping down his arm and stain everywhere, like rosebuds on a vine.

He squeezes his forearm to his chest, impatient, his other arm fiddling with the paper bag in his grasp. Bucheon is awakening, and the place is filling up, boiling with hoarse voices. He could not be bothered with his inconspicuousness before he left- it was too early for that. But he is starting to gather looks, susurrations, and Baekhyeon has no tolerance whatsoever for this right now.

Thus, he storms out of the clinic with his jacket only dangling off one shoulder, stuffing the bag in the little truck of the motorcycle before and speeding down the streets. The wind pricks at him, assails him with spears. He would not be surprised to see the rivulets of blood crystalized with ice. For the first time, the ride feels too long- too many blocks, too many turns, too much coordination.

But then he is home, it is quiet, so quiet- Jongin does not even snore- and he takes his shirt off, and wipes as much of the spillage as possible, the silken fabric catching on the asperity of the dried claret. It has stopped flowing, at least.

He overturns the bag on the bed- ribbons of drug cocktails pouring out, seven per packet- the box of syringes, the box of opioids, the one with alcohol pads. Then, at the bottom, another heap of tests.

It has advanced. Of course.

He dumps everything into the drawer at the bottom of the dresser.

Trotting towards the bathroom, Baekhyeon pauses in front of Jongin’s room, glimpsing at the sleeping man. He is completely tangled in the sheets, one foot fallen to the floor and his mouth parted. The raise of his chest is short, placid.

All of a sudden, Baekhyeon yearns for this kind of peacefulness too, so he traipses back to his room, un-showered, and dives into a long, dreamless slumber.

 

 

 

They collide in the living room, both having woken up at the same time. Jongin is hungover and craving real food. Baekhyeon’s stomach feels like a vacuum too, scratching at him from the inside. 

They stumble on each other in the kitchen trying to make a proper meal with antiquities rescued form Jongin’s freezer until they are all awake, alert on not burning anything.

It is four p.m. when they are done, sated and soft in a pile on the couch. Jongin is laughing at something on his phone, short cackles. Baekhyeon looks over, taking in the familiar fluffiness of his hair and the dent of his dimple. Something is off, changed, genuine to him, as if he is finally wearing the face that he should be.

Baekhyeon realizes that from now on, Jongin is healing.

 

 

 

He clings to Baekhyeon, finally takes him in, as more than a ghost roaming his apartment, a work buddy, someone making noises in the background.

But now, with Jongin finally letting himself seen by Baekhyeon, Baekhyeon feels the simmer of attraction bubbling up to the edge, as he greedily feeds on the proffered attention.

 

 

 

Then the mood at home turns sombre when the first draft of Jongin’s novel reaches the hands of his editor. This is the stage where he has to reread it all and cringe. “It is painful,” he says, “To read your own stuff, no matter how proud you might be of it.”

Be it afternoon, or night, it will be often that Jongin would disappear into his room for fifteen minutes; door never closed all the way, whist he pleasured himself. Sometimes louder, sometimes twice in a row, a short reprieve between, sometimes so quiet that there is only the incidental hum of rubbing.

The day he has to take one more pill than usual, Baekhyeon is antsy. He cannot stand knowing, nor can he ignore it, so he just goes and closes Jongin’s door, as quiet as possible, with his eyes closed tight, so he does not see a thing. Having imagery added to his explicit auditory memories will not help.

When he emerges from there, Baekhyeon is immersed in a game. He has not figured out what do to at it yet. Jongin approaches him confidently, not a smidgen of fluster in his gait. “It helps me concentrate,” he says, matter -of-factly. Laughter imbues his tone, and he looks expectantly at Baekhyeon.

He is waiting for Baekhyeon to laugh at him, to tease him, to treat it as an embarrassment. It dawns on him that this is indeed how he should react- mischief- at catching Jongin jerking off. Probably, this is what Jongin’s own response would be like.

This does not mean anything to him, not like it does to someone that has even the remote chance of being attracted to. Jongin does not see this as a trigger; he sees this as a trivial matter that Baekhyeon can be indifferent to.

Baekhyeon has never been rejected, because he has never asked of anyone to be his anything, but now, he thinks he knows what that feels like.

 

 

 

Jongdae is easy to entertain. His laughter is the easy kind, meant to just put some life, some quivers inside his ribcage. He is peckish for joy. Even the twinkles of his crescent eyes are sleepy, weighty.

Baekhyeon pours him a generous shot of soju, and tumbles on his plate the rest of the meat pieces from the grill. His cheeks are rosy, peaking with small pimples. His mouth keeps rambling, seemingly without Jongdae’s consent, as he cannot seem to pick between chewing or saying one more thing.

It is something about a girl, Baekhyeon detects between hiccupped giggles. The crushing stress of studying brought them together. He words it ambiguously, all avoided eyes and fidgeting, until Baekhyeon pours him another shot, his second and last one, and then Jongdae admits that he has been fucking this colleague of his in basically any public place that had a minimum of two walls.

Baekhyeon cracks up, choking on the piece of food he was chewing. He does not remember his own sooneung, but he did not consider it stressful enough to engage in behaviours of such risk. It must be harder now. “Is it good?” Baekhyeon asks, daringly picking a slice of hot pepper.

Jongdae’s chopsticks stop halfway to his mouth. He was totally expecting Baekhyeon to berate him for this.

“Uhm, yeah.” With his other hand, he unbuttons the first few buttons of the shirt of his uniform. The material looks scratchy. “It wasn’t at first, but now…” He blushes, his grin curling up.

Baekhyeon fights to keep a straight face as the fire of the pepper washes down his tongue. “Always wrap it up, okay?” he says. The grimace spreads over his entire face, and it is Jongdae who cackles now.

He would probably have the same reaction if he saw himself being all serious whilst his face maimed itself.

“Okay.” Jongdae nods frantically.

 

 

 

Baekhyeon indulges Jongdae as much as he can. Often, their meetings are short, for Jongdae is extremely tired, coming home from hagwon late. Baekhyeon makes sure that he eats, that he laughs a little, and sends him upstairs soon thereafter.

 

 

 

Jongin does not call for Sujeong anymore. Instead, he says “Hyeong” when and if he hears the front door. He even looks over, a spring of a simper, a blink, a nod.

The tone keeps changing, keeps warming- as though Jongin _could not wait_ for him to be back, and Baekhyeon’s heart starts squeezing in his chest when he hears it, when he sees the whelming fervency gathered in the curls of his lips.

In these moments, Jongin’s presence pains him more than his malady.

 

 

 

Baekhyeon realizes that he has gained a friend in Jongin, and one more throb to the flutter of his heart.

Then more Jongin, Jongin smiling, Jongin being silly. Jongin singing when he cannot think of anything, lyrics, actual meaning instead of sound modulation. Semantics. And the random streaks of the beautiful worlds he paints with his words.

Jongin, responding with what his character would say instead, then rectify it to something better.

He still likes it at the café. He still reads there, he still tastes most of everything Jongin makes. Often, Baekhyeon will suggest to change Jongin from the tables to the kitchen, but then Minseok smirks, holding tight onto his spatula. “You just want to get rid of the competition. He’s almost catching up on you.”

 

 

 

Then after Jongin has fallen asleep, Baekhyeon will jump on his motorcycle and be so high, so reckless, more often than not looking at the sky instead of the road. It is nice that at least here it is less crowded, quieter, yet he already longs for the sky, the smell of fuel and no resistance whatsoever.

 

 

 

 _How’s Seoul_ , Baekhyeon asks Chanyeol. It comes to him whist he is nursing a cup of tea, one finger rounding the rim over and over, as if it is seeking to get burned. It is weird. He is _waiting_ , for something, for his tea to brew. It is unsettling. There is no time for that anymore.

 _Why don’t you come find out?_ Is Chanyeol’s reply.

Baekhyeon looks to his left, in the dark of the foyer, his keys glinting there. There is nothing really stopping him. He just has to tell Junmyeon about it.

 

 

_Come on a date with me_ , Baekhyeon sends when he is in Seoul, an hour later. It is approaching midnight, smog and light pollution heavy under the sky. It passes by him differently now that he is speeding on the motorcycle.

 

 

He goes to the doctor, a nice man with so many pens in his pocket. He is a gentle one, old enough to have a myriad of grandkids, and he treats Baekhyeon like one of them.

They do a few x-rays, to see how the tumours are faring.

Baekhyeon stares at it, black smudges and some grey and the reason he will soon be high on analgesics. “They’re growing so well,” he says. “Should I give them a name?” he continues emptily after a few stilted breaths.

Chanyeol stiffens, eyes intent on Baekhyeon’s caress of the picture, and the he hiccups, finally bursting into tears. He leaves the room.

 

 

 

“I do not kiss on the first date,” Baekhyeon says, hugging Chanyeol. He has found him outside, his back to the entrance. He holds tight. Perhaps, has refused to believe it even more so than Baekhyeon.

 

 

 

He meets his mother and his father for dinner. Baekbeom is there too, along with his wife.

Baekbeom is drunk and giggly as he pushes Baekhyeon to the side, leaning in all rosy cheeked. “I think Nana is a little pregnant,” his fingers come together, to place a little distance between them. Then he bursts into another fit of giggles on Baekhyeon’s shoulder.

“Prepare for the shit storm,” Baekhyeon replies, a little drunk himself. He likes alcohol- does not mean he cannot enjoy anything anymore just because it will accelerate his decline.

His whole family is in high spirits. When they ask how come he does not do any more concerts, how come that he does not appear on TV anymore, how come that he has left the city, he bullshits like he did for a lifetime, something about going back to the roots, finding a new style, renewing.

Then they ask about a girl, a daughter-in-law as charming as Nana, who blushes at the mention. It comes as second nature for Baekhyeon to lie, to say, “I do have a few candidates,” and fake bashfulness as he looks down. They laugh, nodding. It is good that he is famous now, otherwise they would be worried that he is thirty and still unmarried.

He is glad that at least he did this; he has gathered enough fame to afford them a place in Seoul, for their lives to take off, to be stable.

When he gets home, Baekhyeon scrubs and scrubs at this face until all the makeup is off. His skin catches a roseate tint, finally not ghostly pale with blue accents.

In bed, he texts Jongin. _Stop thinking about stab wounds._

_O.o how did u know_

His fingers seize. _It’s just you I know_

Baekhyeon falls asleep before he sees the other’s reply.

 

 

 

He thinks of Jongin, that stability, a settled family of his own. How close he was to be espoused. But Jongin is heartbroken and straight, and Baekhyeon has nothing to lose, not anymore, but he will lose everything much faster if Jongin does not share the attraction.

 

 

 

Kyeongsu comes over, and rather than beginning with a greeting, he says, “You’re in love. With a new dick,” before his other foot even passes the doorstep. Of all, Kyeongsu’s bluntness is one of his favourite things.

Baekhyeon bursts out laughing, and the quiver of his abdominal muscles caresses the tumours. He does not register the pain.

“Maybe,” Baekhyeon replies.

Kyeongsu just knows, somehow. Perhaps it is because Baekhyeon is an amazing charmer with the ladies, and no man is just pure charm. A man who is after the ladies gets flustered too. Baekhyeon never has. He outright said it when they were at some sort of party a few years ago and he leaned in to whisper to Baekhyeon, “Don’t you think he’s hot?” looking in the direction of a sparsely dressed young man. Baekhyeon froze, effervescent fear bubbling in his chest, and then tried to play it off as a joke. “I’d like to have his guns, yes,” he said. Kyeongsu peered at him kindly, understanding. “You’d like to fuck him too, don’t you?” And this is how he knew.

To the people consuming his work, it does not matter as much what his fingers can do as much as the preference of his genitalia. To Kyeongsu, all that matters is that he gets his ego stroked whenever Baekhyeon happens to get a random boner and he is nearby.

His friend has already disappeared from sight, likely looking for liquor. He pretty much never drinks, but he likes to do it with Baekhyeon, even though he will not admit it. He finds a bottle of bourbon in the freezer, a gift Baekhyeon does not remember receiving, and tumbles some in two glasses. Baekhyeon’s eyes snap ever so briefly to the new stacks of papers from the doctor, before he is back to Kyeongsu’s hand on the glass. He has slim wrists, but his palms are wide. It is a rapturous contrast.  

He takes the glass.

They walk outside, on the terrace. Kyeongsu goes directly for the rail, staring unimpressed at the wide expanse of Seoul stretched before him. He air travels so much that such sight does not delight him at all.

Baekhyeon takes a generous gulp of his drink to fight the cold. He looks over, and Kyeongsu’s glass is in the same stage- half drunk already.

“So, who are you in love with?” asks Baekhyeon. He might not be at all. But he never speaks about things like these unless asked.

Kyeongsu huffs in an instant. So Baekhyeon was right to ask.

“A staff member,” he says. His lips are stretched wide, maiming his words. “She does my hair and ties my ties and laughs a lot.”

Baekhyeon notices it right off the bat. “Is she laughing _at_ you?”

“I like to believe that is not the case,” he coughs, frowning.

“So she is.”

“I am aware I suck at flirting, thank you. But she is cute as fuck and I will not stop wooing her.” He puts so much determination in things he has no confidence in.

Baekhyeon often feels like Kyeongsu’s fame is a waste. If he were to fall in love, he would be spectacular at it. His public presence is too tame as well- he has been in the industry for so long and never had a scandal, never acted inappropriately. He would be ideal to marry and have kids and simply be there to achieve commercial fulfilment.

“So who’s the new boy?” Kyeongsu takes another sip.

“Kim Kai,” Baekhyeon says. Jongin’s alias. It sounds like the entire thrill he is trying to sell beyond his frontage of homey simplicity.

“Heard of him,” Kyeongsu hums, and he holds the note, involuntarily, a segue into a forgotten chorus. “I was overseas when that happened. Everyone thinks he’s some old man with unfulfilled murder fantasies.”

“It’s better than him using his face. Like so, he would only sell to teenagers that are definitely not ready for all that gore.”

“Is Kim Kai the one who offends you with his tiny aprons?”

He is a bit tipsy already and it is too easy to think of Jongin in his apron. “He is.” 

Kyeongsu regards him with sudden drunkenness. He goes from nothing to complete inebriation in the blink of an eye. “Do not fall for straight boys, Baekhyeon. Not again.” He is using his hyeong tone. “You’re super ugly when you cry.”

“He would think I’m beautiful,” Baekhyeon replies instantly. Censoring his thoughts is out of the question in Kyeongsu’s presence.

The way Kyeongsu blinks, gaze falling to the freezing Seoul under, then the silent click of his tongue inside his mouth. A drunk Kyeongsu is also a weirdly perceptive Kyeongsu. “So it’s too late. You’re on your knees for him.”

“It’s not. Just late. Not too late. I’m trying here,” then he downs the glass. He wants to blur all of Kyeongsu’s inquires.

“How are his legs?”

“Amazing.”

Kyeongsu winces. “You’re a leg man.”

“I absolutely am.” Baekhyeon winces too.

“I will have my shoulder ready for you then,” he pats it, too hard. He cannot even control his limbs anymore. “I’ve been working out though. Might not be too comfortable.”

“I noticed. Buff Soo is totally a thing on the internet. I saw some descriptions of how girls salivate over you that would outdo Jongin.”

“I _hate_ working out,” Kyeongsu says, a plump pout on his face. Devastation smears all over his features. Baekhyeon can do nothing but burst into laughter.

 

 

 

Later, much later, when they are loose and have ordered some food, boxes all over Baekhyeon’s living room, he takes Kyeongsu to the piano, makes him sit, and makes him play. Baekhyeon has an amazing voice, but he does not really _like_ singing, whilst Kyeongsu is good at piano, but does not really like it either. They could switch careers, if it was not for this.

But now Kyeongsu is giggling away, his cheeks red as he continues giggling as he plays. Baekhyeon sings next to him, like those tunes in radio commercials, whilst Kyeongsu is keying in anime theme songs.

At the end, they lift and bow, pretending they are receiving a standing ovation.

They fall asleep in a heap of limbs. Kyeongsu is pantless, as always, and Baekhyeon is shirtless because his chest is hot from the mixture of alcohol and pulsing disease. It is again a sleepover after the exam session is over and they are still mumbling music theory terms in their sleep.

Only now there is not sleep until noon. “I have a recording in the morning,” Kyeongsu groans, gruff and petulant. And before anything else, Baekhyeon thinks this man deserves all the love he could possibly get.

 

 

 

“I should write a will,” Baekhyeon says, the thought occurring to him suddenly. “Soon.” He catches his reflection in the glass of one of the displayed paintings. He looks almost the same as he did when he left the scene. He has lost a bit of hip, a bit of cheek. He would be praised for it; he would be asked what his secret diet is. He has not had a public _public_ appearance in a while. The change is noticeable. “Some of these will be more valuable over time. I’ll give them to you.”

He turns to Chanyeol, and he is impeccable as always, up until the faded wreck of his hair. It is slicked back at least, cutting through the indecorum. The champagne flute in his hand shakes slightly, his fingers thick on the frail stem, bubbles clinging to the glass. The buzz around them is in full bloom. Baekhyeon does not even remember the name of the exhibiting artist. And he was not even invited.

“What, now you’re too good to be my inheritor?” he teases, bending a bit to see the pygmy price tag next to the frame. He gets dizzy from the number of digits- a side effect of his pills, most likely. “This is not shabby at all, I mean.”

Baekhyeon straightens, facing Chanyeol, and he just sees, casted by the glaring glow of the lamps, just how bloody pained the grimace twisting on his friend’s face is. Just how much he’s bottling everything in. Just how much he _feigns_.

“Baek-”

“What else could I even do?” Baekhyeon asks. A kind of blithe dejection weaves around his words so tight that it is not a question anymore. His hands slide into the pockets of his dress pants, suddenly cold. He is wearing a suit for the first time in a long while, tight and satiny. It feels like home. “Besides making fun of myself, what else is there for me to even _do_?”

 _“_ Baek.” It is that tone that signals that he wants Baekhyeon to shut up, change the subject, choke on laughter instead.

“I’ll buy you all of this. I’m pretty sure your grandkids won’t starve either if you leave it to them,” he says cheerfully. It is not utterly phony.  

The event has begun less than an hour ago, it is half charitable too, and he renders it all done when he hunts down the person in charge of finances and buys everything. It costs him a couple billions- a trivial glitch in his bank account.

He returns to Chanyeol, handing him a thin, unceremonious receipt. There will have to be some sort of contract made, but later. Chanyeol glares at the details on the paper. So he has forgotten to order himself contacts again.

Baekhyeon huffs, taking the flute away from him. A few sips left, fruity and acidic, just as he fancies. “Give me the details of that lawyer you’re friends with,” he speaks. “The one you said always wears red skirts.”

He puts the receipt in his breast pocket, next to the crisply folded square. His gaze lifts, probing for Baekhyeon’s. It is the same- stiff and awfully unlike him. So far, he has been good at pretending nothing is wrong. But now, seeing as he comes apart, Baekhyeon feels bad for making him witness this, to be a part of Baekhyeon’s departure.

“Would you have preferred I never told you?” he asks. He needs to escape, so he turns to the painting behind them. Seething tar, intoxication and the random streaks of sky blue. It is too articulate for something that claims abstraction.

“No, no, Baekhyeon, of course not,” Chanyeol replies. The shock, or ridiculousness, of the question has not worn off yet. “Of course not.”

“Good. I couldn’t have kept this from you anyway,” Baekhyeon says with a smile, too true. It is lamentable that only now he has the courage to confess things like these. There is no one else who matters to him as much as Chanyeol does.

His teeth let go of his lip as he turns to see another image, just flowers and kittens, a stark blotch of vivid colours.

“I’ll try to…,” Chanyeol breathes next to him, having turned too, so they are shoulder to shoulder. For a second, it seems laboured, the last one, dense and forced.

“Okay,” Baekhyeon replies. He blinks, fast, as if to will tears away, but there are not any. “Now, to your left is a man ogling the _fuck_ out of your wife’s ass.”

It takes a while for Chanyeol to break, to fall back into himself. “I can’t be the only one adoring that dress on her.” His voice is a bit cracked. He is not jealous by any means. Rather, he tries to be for the sake of the jest.

“That’s not adoration though. He wants to _eat_ her.” Baekhyeon appraises the man. He is a very young one, maximum twenty, probably the son of some politician.  Kind of amusing to see him lust over an older woman like that. “Go protect that ass. Go husband.”

“Did you just use husband as a verb?”

“Well, I live with a writer. It was bound to rub off.”

Chanyeol grins, perhaps at Baekhyeon’s goofiness. Just like he should.

“I’ll go husband, okay okay.”

 

 

 

His phone lights up in his hand. The glow pierces through the darkness, his pace faltering between two light poles. Baekhyeon is moderately drunk, light-hearted from having mingled with gaudy stars all evening long. He even danced a bit at the after party.

Thus, what he sees on the screen may be the most amazing thing he has ever received.

“You may go now, Zitao,” he says, twisting to the man hovering behind him. His uniform for tonight resembles a suit, but more stretchable. The swell of his arms and chest pokes through the material. Veins veering over bones along his exposed forearms. Baekhyeon never once felt unsafe while with him.

“But sir-“

“I’ll be inside in just a few minutes.” Baekhyeon’s head jerks sideways, to where his building looms, lit and awake, only several hundred meters away.

Zitao tenses ever so slightly. It is just around this perimeter that the chance of harm increases- people know that he will have to come back home at some point. “I’ll watch you from here until you get inside,” Zitao says eventually. His accent still shows through, still delightful.  He will not drop the _Sir_ no matter how many times Baekhyeon asks him to.

“I’ll keep you out of trouble if anything rises up,” Baekhyeon assures. He has said this before, and he has kept his word. “Have a good night.”

“Likewise, sir.”

Baekhyeon waves at him, childlike, prompted by the alcohol in his system. He picks up the twitch in Zitao’s arm. He never waves back. So Baekhyeon spins on his heels and paces away from the comfort of Zitao’s shadow, attiring the smile that has been frosted into place.

 

 

 

In the lift, he keeps staring at the message. It is a Jongin thing to say. The background the words pop up like they want to claw at him.

_I miss you._

There are many things Jongin misses on a daily basis. His dogs- Baekhyeon knows all their names-an olden cartoon, a specific pair of socks because he is picky about socks in general anyway. But he does not phrase these longings like this.

Baekhyeon does not know how to reply, for he notices now that he cannot say it back and have it bearing as little weight as Jongin’s confession does.

He does not just miss Jongin. It is a bit more.

Before his drunkenness wears off, he decides to play a little song on his phone on one of those stupid piano apps and sends that. He is nervous suddenly, like he has never really been. The stage, the practice room, in front of cameras, there was his place. But like this, in his bed, still wearing the clothes from the gala, doused in caught perfumes and just looking to play something for another reason is nerve racking.

He does not listen to it before sending. He does not even know what kind of song he has played, maybe it was doleful, and with the wrong lilt.

The screen goes black. There are smeared droplets of sweat on it, then his own reflection as a weak contrast in the background.

He waits for a reply, anxious, and when it comes, it is nothing but a :*

Baekhyeon blanks out, chokes, and then throws the phone away.

 

 

 

He can employ the same principle Kyeongsu used to discover him- Jongin’s banter is too relaxed, too confident. He teases Baekhyeon, he touches Baekhyeon, bold and cordial. This is the attitude of someone who cannot be affected back.

There is no possibility of their relationship to evolve into anything, so it is all plain intimacy- just nice nights spent together, hearts sealed but happy.

 

 

 

“I heard you’re a fan,” the man from across him says. He says it slow and suave, like his posture, like his clothes. He was surprised by the invitation, but Baekhyeon had nothing better to do than to accept.

“I heard you’re a fan too,” Baekhyeon replies, and he inhales the scent of his drink. It is not plain espresso anymore. Nowadays it is the quirkiest thing the menu can offer. This one smells of spice and smoulder, mixing with the plain elegance of Wu Yifan’s. There is also a sting beyond that, of turpentine, as faint as the flirtatious slant that florets the corner of Yifan’s mouth.

There appears to be something more to the way he gazes at Baekhyeon, ponderous, blatant in its secrecy. Baekhyeon tests the theory by scooting forward in his seat, fitting a foot between Yifan’s.

“You’ve brought me quite the revenue,” Yifan says, low in the abyss of his register. Baekhyeon will not deny having a thing for accents, the breathiness of Chinese knitting between the cut of consonants. His voice is slow by nature, but now- Largamente.

“I consider it an investment,” then his foot slides closer, up Yifan’s shin. It is long and toned. Yifan does not retract it, does not react with anything but a raised eyebrow and a hand placed on Baekhyeon’s thigh under the table, away from the sight of any nearby patron.

Yifan reaches across the table. He takes Baekhyeon’s cup, turns it, and puts his lips over the remains of crema over the rim.

 

 

Yifan is to leave the country in two days.

As they ascend to the penthouse, Baekhyeon mutters something about services and supplies; obscure enough to allure.

They have no time to play, to drag it out, but they can pretend. This is context, preamble, as Jongin would put it, same collision but now with an extra spark to make it a tad bit more memorable.

He asks Yifan to paint him something. He does so directly onto a wall, the image stretching high above Yifan when he is standing. It is the interpretation of what he sees on Baekhyeon’s scans. He does not ask whose they are, what they mean, if it hurts. He just fills the penthouse with the smell of paint, the air sodden with its pungency, silent.

Baekhyeon lounges behind him on the couch the entire time, staring. Yifan steps away, letting light shine on the finished work. It is good. Baekhyeon likes it.

He came to enjoy art by the simple, imposed association of it going well with his kind of music, with his kind of taste. As if he _has_ to be stuffed full of snobbery if he works in this field.

“Tell me a price,” Baekhyeon says.

Yifan turns, a smirk, sly and aware of its cheesiness, “You.” 

Baekhyeon laughs anyway. “Expensive.” But he is already walking towards the man, suddenly aflame. He still has a long way until he starts shattering, until he stops coveting solace.

Yifan’s hands are big, palms wide. The only smudge of paint is on his little finger, red, periwinkle, the shade that colours the main abscess on the wall. He takes that hand into his own, bringing it up and letting the middle finger part his lips, tongue lavishing over it. At the third lick, Yifan’s gaze darkens, plummets into want.

 

 

 

Yifan fucks him on the floor, Baekhyeon’s legs over his shoulders as he thrusts into him. It is quick, agile, but not desperate. He does not hold Baekhyeon’s gaze, but makes sure no part of him remains untouched by his lips. The presses are light, the few bites shallow. It is not his place to mark Baekhyeon.

But Baekhyeon is the one who kisses him, as a means to distract himself from the onslaught of pleasure, or to enhance it, have it reaching everywhere. His lips are soft, keen, perhaps just as starved for a kiss as Baekhyeon’s has been. Baekhyeon sucks on them delicately, fingers twisting in his hair to bring him closer while he pushes his ass into Yifan’s hips.

Even when the rhythm is lost, when their eyes close, mouths slack for the bliss tinted pants to escape, the movements keep on being careful, relishing in the moment, in what they are doing to one another. Mutually inspiring selflessness.

It is a powerful sentiment, deadening the astringent pain that has settled inside his torso. He can see himself getting addicted to this. How easy. A frugal fuck here and there, always having two careers at stake. 

Baekhyeon comes with a loud cry, thin and wavering, an anarchy rupturing behind his eyelids, his body wringing. Yifan groans into his neck, moist clouds of warmth fanning over riled pulse there, stilling. Baekhyeon’s legs drop around his hips, holding onto him until his tremors subside, his arms giving out as he falls onto Baekhyeon, trapping the pearlescent fluid between them.

Baekhyeon is achy and pleased. He emptily stares at the painting, wet and shiny, as the afterglow pours down his spine

He does not see, but hears Yifan packing up his things and leaving.  

He doesn’t get up from there until dusk starts settling. It is quiet- the buzz of traffic never reaches so high up. Baekhyeon drifts into thinking about Jongin’s voice occupying this silence.

He misses Jongin.

 

 

 

By evening, he is in Bucheon.

 

 

 

Just the kitchen lamp in on. The romantic light, as Jongin calls it, the light bulb nearing its expiry, the yellow tint intense.

Jongin is asleep, head on his folded arms on the table, the fan of his laptop blowing over his bangs.  He is wearing some jeans, a shirt that rides up, exposing two dimples and the band of his underpants. He went out and rushed back in to finish something, business not even finished, Baekhyeon imagines.

He does not step beyond the foyer. It looks just about the same as it was when Baekhyeon left, which means Jongin did almost nothing else besides writing. The fridge must be empty.  He takes the scarf from the hanger and wraps it around his neck, Jongin’s cologne pricking his nose.

 

 

 

Two bursting bags are hooked in the arc of his fingers. Their volume makes it hard to key in the code without hitting the door repeatedly, and when he finally manages to get it open, he is faced with a bleary-eyed Jongin, blinking sluggishly, an overenthusiastic dog attempting to climb up his legs. It is one of the three that are on Jongin’s home screen, its fur wool-like, caramel, ears poofy.

“Hyeong, you’re back,” Jongin says, sticky, and Baekhyeon thinks Jongin looks more like a puppy than the puppy itself, grinning droopily.

He puts the bags down and crouches to give the dog the attention Jongin is denying it. As his spine bends, a sharp pang of pain bursts around his navel, surging upwards into his chest. He loses footing and falls on his butt with a groan that is swallowed by the scarf he’s buried under. The pup is all over him in a second, searching to paw at his face, its tail wagging vigorously. It bites at the scarf until it comes undone, his chin showered with tiny licks and soft yips.

Baekhyeon does not feel the pain anymore.

“I can’t believe he likes you,” Jongin says, and it is somewhat gruff. Then a second later, a short sniffle. “Monggu is such a diva.”

“I think it’s the first one I’ve ever played with,” Baekhyeon says, looking down at the lapful of fur he has. Indeed, he has had nearly no contact with any kind of pet in his life, not beyond his childhood when he used to play with the strays on early, unattended mornings. Then the chance did not come anymore. Baekhyeon barely had time to feed himself.

“Really?” Jongin’s eyes are wide. And somewhat pained. Like playing with a dog is a necessary experience.

“Yep,” Baekhyeon says, and the pup reaches to bite his fingers. They are tiny and sharp and the mild ache feels good. Innocent. But then he bores of that, and begins nosing into the bag dropped next to Baekhyeon.

Baekhyeon gets up, and the pangs return, coursing hectically throughout him. So he makes old man noises, with a hand holding his back and the other clawing at the wall for support. He needs that support.

Jongin giggles, shaking his head at him. Well played, Baekhyeon.

“I’m going to assemble us some dinner,” he says.

Jongin lights up. He must have been hungry and not have even realized, just like Baekhyeon thought.

“Have you eaten anything?” Baekhyeon still asks, slipping into his jumper on the way out of his room. He is wearing these fuzzy pants that feel like blazing clouds around his thighs.

Jongin keeps looking left to right instead of replying to Baekhyeon, furiously petting a dozy Monggu in his lap. The name is on a round plate on the collar, along with a phone number.

Baekhyeon sighs, good-naturedly. “At least tell me what kept you from it?” he requests, tearing the foil off the box of mushrooms. Scolding Jongin is not something he dares to do. He has no right. Not yet. “Must’ve been pretty great if it kept your hunger at bay.”

But he did miss hearing Jongin- nobody can rant quite like him, and fortunately, Jongin seems to have missed it too, for he starts pouring before Baekhyeon has even finished talking. He has been designing an array of plot twists but cannot pick between them. Two of them would be completely unfathomable, but would blend in seamlessly. Another two would be subtle, and only culminate in circumstances of utter mundaneness.

Baekhyeon’s knife halts in his hand, the mess of onion cubes pungent in the air. “Whoa,” he says. At least one of the tears spilling down his face has to be from what he has heard; the others can be from the onion, and maybe one more for the ache inside him.  

Jongin blushes. “ _Whoa_ is pretty much the best compliment I’ve ever received. And I receive a lot of them. ” he says, and he cannot contain his giggle anymore. Monggu stirs in his lap.

It is still just the one lamp on, and it gives the same comfort as the first time he was here. Or maybe it has nothing to do with the light, and it is just Jongin.

“I’d go for that lost bill for the utmost whoa-factor,” he says. The chopped onion tumbles into the hot pan. “You’re getting me so riled up for this. I better get to read it first.”

“I gave you a billion spoilers though? And my villain is stupider than a rock?”

“I have practice at pretending to be surprised. Do you know how many times I had to gape and cry in disbelief at music awards? Four grand prizes in I started to believe it.” He lowers the heat. The sizzle is too loud.

Jongin chuckles in pure disbelief. “Such boastfulness.”

“Such truth,” Baekhyeon counters. The water in the pot in boiling. He sprinkles in the corn flour. “Your spoilers aren’t going to deter me. Nor your dumb villain.”

Jongin nods. “If you prove worthy, I’ll give you the very first copy.” He is still ripping apart the mushrooms Baekhyeon asked him to. Brown crumbs cling all over his cuticles.

“ _If_ I prove worthy?” 

He rips the last one, just in time for Baekhyeon to need them. “If this dish turns out well, whatever it is.” Monggu reaches to lick the residue off of his fingers before he gets the chance to wipe them on his shirt. “By the way, what is this?”

“This was my go-to meal whilst I was in Italy,” Baekhyeon says, and he says it with too much nonchalance. He catches himself. Jongin does not know how he has lived, where he has been so far. “I taught classes for a year there.” They were fun times. He has nothing but fondness to remember.

“You’ve travelled a lot,” Jongin says. He says it with the tone of someone who has been deprived of that.

He plates everything, and then he brings out his passport. It is nearly full, stamp after stamp. Jongin keeps spooning stuff in his mouth whilst he asks this and that about each and every place. Baekhyeon almost never thinks back to these places. They were out of his mind as soon as he left. Now that Jongin is inquiring everything, he recalls.

“So what about you?” Baekhyeon asks. The plates are long empty, the smudges dry. They will be hard to wash.

Jongin turns bashful, stifling titters into his chest. “I’m scared of planes.”  

 

 

 

“Am I fired yet?” he asks Junmyeon, buttoning the shirt of his uniform.

Junmyeon just shakes his head, cordial and beguiled. He is on minimum wage here, the shortest shifts possible. A vacation as long as he took cannot be of much harm to his employment. Not to mention the massive impact his presence made on the profits.

Junmyeon pins his nametag to the pocket of the shirt, smoothing the folds of it with a few polite gestures. It took longer than expected for it to be done. Now all customers will stop doubting their sanity when they see him.

 

 

 

Routine and normalcy are startlingly gratifying. He thought living like this would be a downgrade and he would tire of it fast, and then go seeking higher thrills, higher sensations up until he would disintegrate from exhaustion before the disease even ate half of him.

Now he receives a smile, a thank you from a customer as he fills her glass with wine, and perhaps it is not as grandiose as earning an endless din of applause and a million roses, but is it just as warming.

  

 

 

They have a little contest in place, of who gathers the most phone numbers. Only those on paper count- napkins, the wrapper of the sugar packets, receipts. At the end of the day, they count them, and it is Jongin who wins most often, Baekhyeon coming in second place. Then Minseok will be out of the bakery some days, reeking of vanilla and donning the widest, gummiest smile and would beat them all.

“But you’re married? Your wedding band is atrociously huge? How is that possible?” Jongin pouts each and every time.

Minseok shrugs, putting on his gloves to go back into the kitchen. Baekhyeon rests his hand on Jongin's shoulder, loose and unobtrusive, and gives him half of his own numbers with a tiny wink.

“You’re the king now,” Baekhyeon says.

Jongin looks at him, act in place, as he thaws in a splash of a _wwws_. “You’re sharing your harem with me! You’re the best hyeong ever!” His arms wrap around Baekhyeon’s, crossing over his back, a hand on each shoulder as he tucks him under his chin. Baekhyeon freezes, crumbles, and all that is left of him is the hectic throb of his heart, bare and raw, being pressed right into Jongin’s chest.

He lets go all too soon, before Baekhyeon can react, can dwell, can memorize anything. It is barely now that he notices the dismal notes of sourness, fruitiness clinging to his breath. He has been in the wine cellar again.

Baekhyeon takes in the twitch of his cute grin as he leafs through the mess of phone numbers, judging them by the penmanship, and he reckons that Jongin would not have hugged him if he were perfectly sober. Instead of hurting, that realization merely brings relief- the dull kind from a fulfilled expectation.

 

 

 

It is getting sunny. Not warm, but there is a pleasant burn on his skin when he lounges outside the café on his break. Jongin usually squints at it, preferring to sit in the shade. He is such a pickle- there’s nothing he likes better than being indoors.

He is nursing a cup of warm milk, both palms on it, steam rising into his face. The golden glow draped on his face contours darkly in the prettiest places, softening edges. Baekhyeon tries not to stare, sending instead countless pictures of his shoes, his hands, his hair, the pavement to Chanyeol.

But then Jongin will be mumbling under his breath, choking on milk as he curses at something. He is reading psychology articles mostly, a jumbo of words Baekhyeon cannot decipher on the screen. Then other occasions, when they have a shorter break, watching dog videos and laughing until he falls out of his chair, keeping Baekhyeon close as they watch together, nearly cheek to cheek, and Baekhyeon can do nothing but dissolve into laughter too.

 

 

 

Commotions still arise- some fans, pushy, demanding, touching him inappropriately, even screaming. He has found a pair of thongs in the check holder once, maybe twice, even condoms. There are gropes to his butt, gropes to his crotch. Someone near enough to leave a perfect lipstick smudge on the collar of his shirt, it kindling more attempts of the same endeavour after pictures of it appear on the internet, mouths aggressively reaching to him.

Jongin is the one to reprimand them, to wrestle them away with determination, but gentle, like Baekhyeon has taught him. If not, his arm will snake around Baekhyeon’s waist, pressing him to his side as he takes him away into the kitchen, offering him a piece of cake. He ends up eating most of instead, fork angrily snapping on the porcelain, pacing around with some irate eyebrows. “I should’ve beaten them until they were purple like…lavender. Or plums. Fucking blue.”

He says all of this with a mouthful of unchewed cake, and he is positively _livid._

Baekhyeon grins, just joy taking control of his lips. “Glad to know you would murder for me,” he says.

Jongin looks at him with a straight face, humourless. “They should not touch you like that. Ever.”

“I know.”

“I’m willing to fight,” Jongin declares, as if he has not even heard him, and he stabs another piece of the cake, stuffs it in his mouth and promptly chokes.

 

 

 

Zitao visits. He is not wearing all black for once, but his own clothes, flashy and patterned, colours vivid. He has been Baekhyeon’s personal bodyguard for five years now, on call for whenever Baekhyeon needs him. He is a strong man, with a semi permeable heart. He also looks like a serial killer when he wants.

Bashfulness taints his demeanour as he approaches the counter, “Hello sir,” he says.

Baekhyeon did not order him here. It turns out, Chanyeol did. Someone should be in town with him, someone should protect him. He has been reckless enough already.

“Did he tell you why he sent you to me?” Baekhyeon asks.

“No,” Zitao replies. He frowns. “Shall there be a reason?” Someone pushes from behind him, phone in hand. “Please, no pictures,” he says, perfunctory, firm. There is not a phrase he has heard Zitao say more often.

“I’m not hot enough to be attacked by thirsty people anymore,” he says. Zitao looks at him in utmost disbelief. Even if the demographics changed, he is no less prone to fanaticism. The proof is all over the internet.

“You may go, Zitao,” Baekhyeon sighs, “I’ll call you when I need you.”

“Are you sure, sir?” It sounds like defiance.

Baekhyeon looks to his right where Jongin is coming from the back, pushing two fresh pies onto the display, twisting them until they perfectly align with the rest.  

“I’m sure.”

“Please be careful, sir,” he says, as always.

 

 

 

He notices Jongin staring at a girl that looks too much like Sujeong. And another. And another. Perhaps, it is because Sujeong is so pretty, and it is just that brand of prettiness that is impossible to take your eyes off of; long, luscious, wavy hair, a clinical whiteness to their skin, lithe stature and a goofy smile. All the ideals rolled into one.

But there is tension in Jongin’s back. The little notebook in his pocket overflows with notes.

Baekhyeon does not pretend that this is just because they are beautiful. Jongin actually thinks about Sujeong.

 

 

 

The first time he gets his salary, he sends flowers to his mother. For himself, he buys discounted cotton tee-shirts, and for Jongin he orders a kind of super expensive shampoo. Baekhyeon cannot stand him buying the same kind Sujeong bought. His hair does not look good from it either.

“I never knew I needed this,” Jongin says after he comes out of the shower. Droplets are still falling down his shoulders, darkening the fabric. The skin underneath is not all dry, for Baekhyeon can see the ridges of his musculature showing through. “Thank you, hyeong.”

 

 

 

Obnoxious knocks begin flowing through the flat merely minutes after they get home from the café. Baekhyeon’s feet are still burning from all the standing, but he forces himself to go answer the door anyway.

Chanyeol and Sehun are standing in the doorstep. Baekhyeon stares, then Jongin appears behind him and swiftly scorns at Sehun. “Did you come empty handed?”

Sehun rolls his eyes. “He has bigger hands,” he mutters, gesturing with his head to Chanyeol, who has his hands full of takeout boxes. Fried chicken, Baekhyeon recognizes the brand.

Chanyeol is not wearing a suit, but some ratty jeans softened between the legs and too short. His socks are the most expensive garment he is donning. Baekhyeon finds himself chuclking at the sight, and Chanyeol looks down at himself, rising with his own chuckles to meet Baekhyeon’s.

Sehun is pushing inside, cloaking Jongin in a brief hug that Jongin snorts at. Chanyeol just lifts the bags and regards Jongin cheerily. “Happy birthday,” he says.

Jongin is stunned, rosiness topping his cheeks, feet shuffling. “You have so many teeth, they could fit into two smiles,” he accuses.

“I’ll just smile twice then,” Chanyeol says, and his smile, lo and behold, widens.

But Baekhyeon is still rooted at the door, still surprised, because he did not know that today is Jongin’s birthday. He thinks back to it, and notices that this was a good day- lots of smiling, getting compliments, and Jongin has also managed to refine that recipe of white hot chocolate that is a derivate of ganache he has been working on for a week.

It is a good day to be Jongin’s birthday.

 

 

 

Drunkenness ensues, albeit slower because they only have makgeolli. Jongin likes nothing else. They watch a movie with a lot of action, guns and laughably crisp dialogue, and Jongin cannot stop commenting at the plot while Sehun throws bits of his dried squid at him every time he gets too loud. It does not mean that Jongin still does not have his head on Sehun’s shoulder though, their calves interlocked as Sehun tries to keep his excitement at bay. He has the tendency to hurt himself in his glee sprees.

“I feel like this is a competition,” Chanyeol leans in to whisper. He is actually whispering, a sound so soft in his ear compared to the mindless bedlam he had when he was younger. Baekhyeon follows the direction of his gaze, settling on the pair on the floor. “We can be cosier.” Then Chanyeol wraps around him, Baekhyeon’s legs landing over his thighs, their arms an enmeshed mess in their laps. Baekhyeon bounces a bit on Chanyeol. His thighs are muscular, tight. He has not given up the gym yet.

That last grain of chilliness within his bones is gone once he melds into Chanyeol, having the loud rumbles of his laughter tickling him.

All of a sudden they are too drunk to sit still, Jongin rising to his feet first, whilst bullets rain in the movie. He changes the channel and tugs Sehun up, then Baekhyeon and Chanyeol and they dance all over the living room to the girl group songs that come up on TV. Jongin plays the instructor, Sehun continuously cussing at his complete lack of skill whilst Chanyeol tries to be a good boy and follow them with precision. His limbs coil and take him down so many times that he finally remains on the floor, giggling like a ninny, a chirpy bass that punctuates the night.

Sehun, outside crafting complicated choreographies, only knows how to twerk, and he gets down to business resolutely. Baekhyeon and Jongin look at him impressed at first, then Baekhyeon begins salivating and Jongin’s face ascends into horror, mouth agape. “Dude,” Jongin says, dazed, “Stop that. My junior is beginning to riot.”

Sehun response is to get even lower and shake his ass even harder, eliciting a weird breathy squeal. Jongin looks down and pats his crotch tenderly, muttering, “Shhh, do not do it.”

Soon enough, Sehun falls on that delectable butt of his and does not bother getting up, piling elegantly on top of Chanyeol as he tries to drink a bit more makgeolli and spilling it all over himself and Chanyeol. His face is as flat and as straight as ever.

Just Baekhyeon and Jongin are standing. The party is not over- they keep dancing, following whatever is shown on TV, screaming the lyrics along when they know them, and making them up when they do not. Jongin begins sexualizing it at some point, getting all hip-thrusty and body-rolly, and Baekhyeon starts also doing it, while Chanyeol and Sehun pick favourites and whistle and catcall like cavemen in heat. Jongin is laughing so hard that he ends up spitting in Baekhyeon’s face, which prompts Baekhyeon’s laughter, so Baekhyeon spits in his face too.

“This is so gross,” Jongin drawls. But it is empty, he does not believe it for a second, and neither does Baekhyeon.

 

 

Freshly collapsed on the couch, Baekhyeon takes in the scenery before him- a mess of giggling friends, pink cheeks and splitting smiles. This is life he is living right now, and he thinks, this is more than enough. He is completely content.

 

 

 

Sehun has to restrain a Chanyeol who keeps mumbling about how much he misses his wife. He keeps insisting on leaving. “Kangam is not two blocks over for fuck’s sake,” Sehun yells drunkenly. The arm he has around Chanyeol tightens, making sure the giant does not tip on his own feet because they will take the fall together if that happens. He is taking Chanyeol into Jongin’s room, falling asleep before even hitting the bed.

Jongin and Baekhyeon stare at them, swaying lightly. “So we’re taking your bed because we’re shrimpier and your bed is shrimpy too,” Jongin declares, turning on his heels and marching toward Baekhyeon’s room, limbs flailing in their venture. Baekhyeon does not fare any better. Luckily, he trips just in time for the mattress to attenuate his plunge.

Jongin chuckles from somewhere under the covers.

 

 

 

“Jongin?”

“Mm?”

“Happy birthday.”

“It was the happiest, hyeong.”

Tonight, Baekhyeon learns about Jongin’s breathing patterns, twitches, and he way his fist clenches at the comforter, chin tucked to his chest even if the rest of his body is liberally flared.

 

 

 

“He does you good,” says a severely hungover Chanyeol.

Baekhyeon is just as hungover, but he does his best to smoothen out Chanyeol’s clothes. “Who?”

They really should start having fun like adults. Indulging in such amounts of alcohol is of a striking childishness.

“Jongin,” Chanyeol says. His breath is still acrid under the mint.

Baekhyeon blinks, questing for a single, solid reasoning to agree to that statement. There is not one. It is just Jongin all around. “He does.”

 

 

 

Jongin goes out to meet his editor, a heavy bag on his shoulder brimming with papers and his laptop. His final draft is done, at last.  

He is back with a smile, tired but accomplished, and a big box under his arm. He pushes it towards Baekhyeon, somewhat hesitant. Baekhyeon tears the tape on it and peeks inside. A helmet.

Baekhyeon has just one for himself. He huffs, the corner of his lips giving into a smirk.

“And here I thought a motorcycle is more frightening than a plane.”

 

 

 

Baekhyeon overdresses, layers thick on himself. It is nightfall, still cold, but mostly, he needs to camouflage his skinniness for when Jongin’s hands wind around his waist.

The first thing Jongin does when he sees Aeri is to pat it, all fearful, and blurt, “Please be kind to me,” he says, the bravery in him shaking.

“You should ask that of me too,” Baekhyeon mutters. He appraises Jongin, afraid that perhaps he is dressed too light. The air will cut right through him at that speed. But then he remembers he will be the one in front, so he will be shielding most of that.

“I give you cake every day. And I rescue you from fanatics. You’re super-duper beholden to me.”

“Smart of you to rely on that,” Baekhyeon says, winking before he puts the helmet on, then the gloves. Jongin gets behind him, but he does not immediately reach around him, not even after Baekhyeon has turned on the engine. Instead of calming him, this time around the purring appends the titillation. He twists the acceleration just for a second, just for a few degrees so the machine jerks, and Jongin is scrambling for purchase, squeezing the breath out of him as he pleads “Please have mercy,” through the helmet.

Baekhyeon bursts into laughter.  He has to take his helmet off so he does not suffocate.

 

 

 

They end up at the Wolmido theme park. It is late on a weekday. It is closed, deserted. Somehow, it seems more charming like this, bathed in flimsy luminescence.

Jongin dismounts on quivering legs, and his hair is just as sweaty as Baekhyeon’s, sticking to his forehead.

“That was,” he shakes his legs before trying to plant them firmly. He seems more than affected, at loss of words. It is quite the accomplishment- Jongin always has a well-forged sentence under his tongue. “Better than sex,” he comes up with, frowning at his own words with a ruffled kind of disbelief. “This is actually true. I’m trying not to cry at the lameness.” A beat of silence follows, then, a lick of his lips. “Is Aeri single?”

Baekhyeon takes the gloves off with his teeth. He narrows his eyes, judgmental. “No.”

“Damn. Then I remain un-fucked.”

 

 

 

The exuberance does not dwindle as they wander about. Jongin denies hunger up until he has his hand on his stomach, petting it lovingly.

“We’ll get in the first restaurant to the left,” he commands with urgency. A lot of them are closed. It takes a while until they find one- it is a bit dingy looking, but big. It seems worn rather from being visited often than age. It is a good sign.

The specialty is jjamppong, and Jongin orders immediately two bowls of that. Then he turns to Baekhyeon, all smiles. “I do not like jjamppong.”

“Me neither.”

“We will be changed men as of tonight,” he mutters, full on bravado. Baekhyeon sees him already picking at the little plate of radish kimchi that has been set on the table, and he knows that is just Jongin’s hunger talking.

When the food arrives, still boiling in the stone bowls, the ajumma squints at him. “Aren’t you…?”

“I’m not,” Baekhyeon insists before she even knows that to ask. “I’m not.”

“You must be,” she presses, the wrinkles around her eyes seeping deep, assured. Baekhyeon remembers that today was the rerun of a variety show that he took part in like six years ago- he had watched a bit of it this afternoon. Maybe she did, too, and her memory is refreshed.

“I really am not…My face is quite common, uhm- ”

“He’s not Baekhyeon,” Jongin cuts in, stern, pieces of food flying from his mouth. The ajumma gawks at him. Jongin glares for good measure. The ajumma retreats.

“This is actually good,” Jongin then mutters, amazed, slurping a spoonful of soup happily. “Eat up.” His cheeks bulge with rice.

Baekhyeon tastes it, and it is indeed hearty and rich. Jongin manoeuvres the bones out of the fish expertly, while he makes fun of Baekhyeon clumsiness. But he does reach over to pick a few for Baekhyeon, sneaky plucks with his chopsticks in Baekhyeon’s bowl.

When he pays at the front desk, the ajumma gives them some ice cream on the house. “In case you are indeed Baekhyeon,” she says, gazing up at him nervously.  

 

 

 

So far it seems Jongin suffers from wanderlust deprivation. He is way too animated, a skip to his step as he ogles everything around him. It is too dark to even see properly.

“What was that about? Why was she afraid of you?”

Baekhyeon swallows the clump of ice cream, milky vanilla, enjoying the cold slide of it through his disease fraught body. “There was once when I mildly complained about the service at the restaurant on one of my SNS accounts and that business went bankrupt within a month.”

Jongin stops, regarding him with a sly smirk, but it is all covered by the cone of his ice cream. He licks it, the tip rounding the mound, leaving a vague canal. Baekhyeon coughs. “You monster. What was the inconvenience?”

“The two waiters attending me were a couple. They couldn’t keep their spat out of my plate.”

Jongin swallows. “I would’ve given them five stars for that. Especially if it was a steamy spat.”

“It wasn’t.”

“Fine, four stars then.”

 

 

 

They go near a dock, small but expensive boats lining the concrete wall. Baekhyeon recalls that he has bought a yacht too, at some point, but cannot remember what happened to it. Jongin gazes in awe at the expanse of water. Only a bit of it is visible in the poor light, the first few curls of foam before everything blackens.  

He drops on his butt on the concrete edge. The sea level is still far away from his feet, but nothing can be distinguished beyond them anyway.   

“Will I ever get a famous as you, hyeong?” he asks. The ripple of the waves is tame, lines thinly frothing. “Will I ever be the bane of restaurants?”

Baekhyeon thinks about it. Baekhyeon’s read all of Jongin’s titles. He has published a trilogy and another two independent novels. They are nothing short of stunning.

“Do not be vague with me. I know you’ve read them,” jolts Jongin’s voice.

“How?” Baekhyeon balks. He really thought he had been discreet.

Jongin huffs in pure mirth. “You quoted me. To me. More than once. I recognize my own lines, especially when you use them to reason nonsense with me.”

“Oh.” He had not realized. Jongin does not seem mad though. There is just amusement.

“Your attempt was cute,” Jongin confirms.

Baekhyeon relaxes, and can think now about the initial question. He will never be the same kind of famous like Baekhyeon, but perhaps his works will be taught in schools too. “I think you already are. Except nobody knows you.”

“I thought this concept of anonymity would be cool, you know.”

“It’s pretty cool,” Baekhyeon agrees. He has had this thought too. If he could not make it in the industry, he will just make and record everything on his own, then publish them on the internet under some ridiculous alias.

“I can’t wait for school kids to hate us while we chill in our graves.” Jongin’s feet start swinging. It is a spasmodic motion, with a strong impetus. Baekhyeon looks down at the beckoning naught of the water, and puts a hand on his shoulder, tugging, bringing him down until he is lying on the concrete. There is less chance of him drowning at least.

Baekhyeon lies next to him. It is cold, but they are thickly dressed.

“I never liked the sky,” Jongin blurts before his back even hits the ground. Baekhyeon chuckles, the spice of the jjamppong crawling up.

“Why?” Jongin does not remember to continue.

“It’s _frustrating_ as fuck.” That inflection carries so much emotion. Baekhyeon offers a chuckle for it too. “All you can do to it is _see_ it. An utterly unattainable, teasing bitch.” The same indignation stains his pitch.

Baekhyeon still laughs, because Jongin has just called the sky a _bitch_ , and Jongin starts copying too, before trying to save himself by making it worse and asking “Are you laughing at my spatial blue balls?”

 Baekhyeon actually hits him. “No no,” he manages. One more chuckle. “Something must have been in that soup.”

“No no, bet you’re one of these people who think the stars are some magical shit that is better than you.”

“I’m not.”

“They are just _fire_.”

“I swear I’m not one of these people.”

“Glorified matchsticks.”

“I’m not.”

Now Jongin is turned towards him, his face close, shadow pooling in his dimple, and the fall of his dark bangs over his lids. His breathing is cheery, not a chuckle, but something deeper, hidden, too true. His lips are open, arched at the corners, the pink of them ebbing into red innermost. Baekhyeon’s throat constricts, and he fights to avert his gaze, and he manages; only it slides, to the crisp protrusion of his Adam’s apple, then the open shirt lower, buttons pressured by the pull of the material from his position.

Baekhyeon’s phone starts ringing in his pocket. He fetches it at once, breaking away. Nobody is calling him. It is the alarm for him to take his pills. He silences it, and puts it back.

He does not return to Jongin. Instead he looks up. “Too bad, because there’s a lot of sky, and it’s everywhere.”

The rumble of pebbles tells him that Jongin has turned too. “I’m hurting myself with this hatred for it.”

“You’ve been sporting these spatial blue balls for a while though, haven’t you? You’re used to them.”

“Yeah. They’re just about turquoise now.”

It is right now, when Baekhyeon laughs again, when he wonders if he is indeed drunk, if it must be something else other than Jongin that makes him so light and so content. He chances a look over, to Jongin’s profile, and queries if the feeling is the slightest bit mutual. If he offers Jongin the smallest figment of happiness.

“Do you want her back?” Baekhyeon spouts without thinking. It is too much of a selfish question. He is not ready to hear that answer. “The rooster.”

“M,” Jongin says, a tiny, inquisitive sound. “No, I never did. Couldn’t even fathom insisting that she comes back from the very moment she was out the door. There’s a reason she left. I don’t get to debate with that.”

“But do you _want_ her?”

He sighs, as if Baekhyeon’s question is unnecessary, has just been answered. He brings a hand in above himself, the digits webbing shadows on his face. He rubs the base of his ring finger. “Not anymore.”

Baekhyeon looks at Jongin, lax and merry, and at the starry night. Right now, there is nothing else for him to do besides falling in love. 

 

 

 

When they get back home, just a little before daybreak; he texts Kyeongsu.

 _Get that shoulder ready._

_*drops dumbbell*_ comes Kyeongsu’s reply. Baekhyeon cannot laugh at it. He is all burned out. 

 

 

 

Baekhyeon had bought a few boxes of dim sum and some cans of beer and climbed up to Chanyeol’s studio. His roots had been slightly greasy, the strands obediently staying away from his face. He had to do the final changes to an album- just a lot of listening.

Baekhyeon had knocked on the cups of his headphones, short raps with his nails, and Chanyeol had jumped, the chair he was sitting in toppling to the floor. Baekhyeon had shaken his head and moved forward, laying some papers directly on the controls and putting the boxes on top.

Grease had flown everywhere, patches visible over the black of the soundboard. By the time Chanyeol had noticed, they were both drunk, stomachs queasy. After passing mid-twenties, food had not been as forgiving with their well-being.

He had stared down blankly, eyes blown by weariness and mouth pushing up into his cheeks. “These have your name on them,” he had said, pointing at the papers. He had not seemed to be reading, focus diffused over all of them. But it had been panic, first and foremost, the one to twist his face.

“A lot of things do.”

“True that.”

Then Chanyeol had gotten up, rolled all the wrappers and papers into a giant ball and squeezing it so it fit in the tiny bin. It will be recycled, Baekhyeon had thought, ineptly. Toilet paper will be made out of his ante-mortem obituary.

Chanyeol had been the first to know about it.

 

 

 

One minute Baekhyeon is snorting at the lyrics Chanyeol is sending on their chat line, and the next he is being looked down on by a middle-aged woman. Baekhyeon springs off the couch, catching his pants to tug them properly over his backside. He hastily bows to Jongin’s mother. She looks just like him, youthful, winsome, except in a smaller, drier package.  

The tapping from the other room stops, then Jongin is running and launching himself at her. It only lasts a second, for he immediately drops his attention to the triad of puppies leashed to her hand. They yip joyously, climbing on Jongin like is the best thing ever. He is saying some things, baby talking to them, petting each one and letting them lick and bite at whatever they can reach.

Mrs. Kim smiles, faking disappointment at having her son love the dogs more than her. She walks off to look through the kitchen- opening the fridge and judging the state of the dish sponge. Jongin does not answer to any of her questions; too busy drowning in a pile of barking woolly pups.

“You should meet with Sujeong’s parents,” she begins, louder. Jongin reacts now, by gazing at Baekhyeon first. It is too short for Baekhyeon to decipher what he wants to convey. He is rapt on Mrs. Kim now. “It’s only fair that they hear your side of the story as well. You’ve been together for so long.” There is displeasure. Perhaps, she does not know why they broke up.

Baekhyeon keeps quiet, trying to make himself non-existent. He feels out of place. So he lures Monggu into his lap, who shortly comes to nip at him. None of the other two dogs like him. Monggu has enough enthusiasm for Baekhyeon to feel loved anyway.

He does not hear what Jongin replies with. He just catches the sight of him leaning over the counter, gaze away from his mother’s. She talks way more than him.

Before she leaves, Jongin still tries to have at least one pup stay. They really do not like living in an apartment, and Jongin’s parents live in a house with a big yard for them to romp around. They are already pawing at Mrs. Kim’s shoes though. “Traitors,” Jongin pouts.

Baekhyeon bows again to her. He realizes his farewell was the only word he has exchanged with her.

In the quiet of the apartment- dog claws on floorboards make a filling sound- Jongin hums a brief tune. He takes a seat on the coffee table. Baekhyeon is sprawled on the couch, just like he had been before Mrs. Kim came over.

“She cheated on me,” Jongin says. “She’d been unfaithful.” He is blank, robotic. Then he looks up, his lip trembling ever so slightly. “I remember her saying something about this dude’s skills in bed. So she’d bedded him, while she was still with me. So she used the same mouth she blew that dude with to tell me I’m not worthy of her. So maybe it’s not just me who is the bad one.” The relationship had ended before Jongin had the chance to be hurt by her betrayal, and then had been told that betrayal was his fault. “You ever had a girlfriend do that to you? I doubt it, hyeong is so-“

“No,” Baekhyeon cuts him off, soft but steadfast. “Never.”

“Indeed, who would cheat on you,” he says with a cluck. Maybe he is talking out of age-induced respect, or based on his interactions with the people at the café, rather than his own appraisal of Baekhyeon. “Being cheated on sucks. Would not recommend. Please pray this shit doesn’t happen to you.”

He shrugs, blasé, and gets up, bending to touch his toes then up overhead and shimmies to his room. The tapping din resumes.

The noise becalms Baekhyeon, takes him back to different points in his twenties. He has had two boyfriends who had to be kept in the shadow so deep that they barely felt like lovers. He has had a number of vain fucks in bolted bathroom stalls. A number of strangers he has seen for two heartbeats that he would have liked to taste the lips of.  So Baekhyeon  has never experienced this kind of betrayal, for he has had nothing to trust in the first place, and he cannot decide which one feels worse.

 

 

 

The first day Baekhyeon feels like he is indeed dying is one morning when he wakes in a pain so bad that he cannot even reach in the drawer to get himself his medicine.

He thrashes, his body seeking to do _something,_ to make it stop. This is also the first day he cries, from the sheer anguish, sobs raking over the havoc ignited inside. And he cries, crashing and arduous. And he cries, until he is all withered, even more so than the illness spreading within his viscera, and he does not know what he is saying but it must be loud, for suddenly he is not alone anymore.

Jongin is there with him, as Baekhyeon twists and nearly falls off the bed looking for the vial of morphine. The box of syringes tumbles to the floor, spilling, and he grabs a bunch in one of his hands but the morphine- Jongin’s hand wraps around the small item.

He guides Baekhyeon back into bed, aligns him with his chest and brings him in, lets him clutch and clutch. The rapture burns, and it is a pain like he has never felt before, a supernova of agony.

“Sto morendo,” he is saying, finally registering it, and he says it again and again, until his mouth is so filled with slime and coughs that the words make no sense anymore. But they do not need to anyway; they do not need a language, for the despair of Baekhyeon could only ever be of a dying man, on the brink of anything, one foot already in the void and capillaries already dried up.

He manages to notice Jongin holding his phone with one hand, the emergency number half keyed in. “No,” Baekhyeon breathes. “Do not.” Baekhyeon swats weakly at his hand, seeking for the vial and thrusting it to him. Jongin just stares, and perhaps there is more to him, but Baekhyeon’s tears are thick and relenting and Jongin is all blurred out. “ _Please._ ”

He starts tugging his clothes off, even when he can barely move, and he does not know what strength he has, but he manages to rip them, making to take the supplies away from Jongin because he is not moving. “Please, just- ”then his words are lost, for his mouth is too full of some bitter fluid, metallic and putrid.

Jongin does react then, reading briefly the label on the bottle, before he tears the little packet of alcohol soaked wipe and reaches for the back of his arm. Then the packaging of the syringe and Baekhyeon is still writhing, twitches in his body as the pain gurgles up his throat. When he loads the vial, he looks directly at Baekhyeon, astonishingly sober compared with the shock he had earlier. He draws and draws. When three quarters of the vial is gone, Baekhyeon nods.

Then the sting of it comes, so soft in comparison, a pinch that is nearly playful. And when it is gone, Jongin gathers him back into his arms, one hand in Baekhyeon’s hair as he lets him whimper there, wetting Jongin’s skin from where he has ripped his shirt too.  It ebbs out, slowly, slide by slide of Jongin’s hand down his back, and before the pain is actually gone, he slips into a slumber, so peacefully silent.

 

 

 

Baekhyeon wakes to the instantaneous knowledge that the kind of pain has changed. The simmer is stronger, and now there is a bit of pressure. Nothing unbearable though, not now.

He rubs at his face a bit, meeting roughness and flaking. When he blinks, he feels rawness too, his waterlines scratching at each other.

He pads out of the room- the door has been left wide-open, directly facing Jongin’s equally open one. It is quiet, so quiet. So he just walks a bit more and sits on the couch, facing the television, which is turned on and muted. He cannot make sense of the images, but he kind of tries.

Then he is woken up by Jongin, who does not look at him any differently.  He sits down in front of the couch, between Baekhyeon’s legs, who parts them to accommodate. It is deliberate, attentive, how their fingers intertwine and Jongin brings Baekhyeon’s hands into his hair to play with it. The ratty notebook and the unsharpened pencil are in Jongin’s hold. “My protagonist has a pet lion now,” he says, light and conversational. On the page of the notebook, there is indeed a little doodle of a mane, the face maimed by Jongin’s lack of artistically abilities. “What should I name it?”

Baekhyeon looks down, at his thinned fingers, his nails seeming so long, and the soft blunt-ended strands between them, a brown so dark that it illuminates into such a precious gold, and he is so blank. “Sarang,” he says, and it is idealist, as much as owning a pet lion is. It will eat you up all the same. You will be a carcass all the same.

Jongin hums. Pianissimo. Two counts. “The speckle of romance this banal story needed,” he says, still in a hum.

Baekhyeon thinks that if this were a confession, it would also be denial.

 

 

 

After Jongin leaves, for once their shifts not matching, Baekhyeon drives himself to the hospital. One of the has cysts ruptured, a minor one. The rest of them seem unlikely to do so. He stays there overnight, sedated as he receives treatment to clean up the damage.

It takes more coercion than he has the patience for to get the documents of leaving on his own risk to sign, but he manages.

 

 

 

At home, Jongin has cake and tea and he is serene, a billion things to say about the happenings Baekhyeon has missed at the café. Nothing is different. Absolutely nothing. It is like Baekhyeon did not nearly take his last breath in Jongin’s embrace.

So Baekhyeon simpers, giddy, and phones up Zitao for a few more combat tips for Jongin to attempt imitating with the grace of a high penguin.

 

 

 

The swelter of summer weighs heavy in the atmosphere. Baekhyeon is in Seoul, attending a bunch of meetings. He has been offered to do the soundtrack for an upcoming massive blockbuster. Baekhyeon sits and listens to people talking in English, propositioning an extremely attractive offer to him.

Baekhyeon promptly refuses. “However, you may use some of my published compositions.”

He storms out of the meeting room, automatically taking the route to Chanyeol’s studio.

What is different about him, what made him famous, is the fact that he made catchy songs. People could hum them on the bus, they could remember them, any part of any tune, and it would be recalled instantly. He can see the world being hungry for more of that. 

One of the girls in Chanyeol’s group is practicing in the recording room. Her vocal range is weak, but very melodious, just right to accompany synthesized-type songs. When she is finished with her interpretation, Baekhyeon starts clapping, startling Chanyeol again out of his chair. He knew Baekhyeon would be coming, and he still nearly shat his pants. Baekhyeon would have married this dork if he was not ridiculously straight and ridiculously taken.

“Would you like to do this next?” Baekhyeon puts the folder he has just received in front of Chanyeol. By the time he would be able to work on this, the album would already be out, promotions over. Baekhyeon knows that he has always wanted to work for a movie. And there is no one else he would trust with his legacy other than Chanyeol. “It’s just your type of movie too,” he boasts. Perhaps his voice is frail, but not a bit of sunniness is lost.

The girl comes out of the studio. She gasps at the sight of him, and then starts bowing frantically. Baekhyeon laughs, giving her a few encouraging words.  She ushers out with a bounce to her step.

Chanyeol beholds him warily. “Why do not you want to do it?”

“Too much work. I just discovered laziness. This society is fucked up. Laziness is amazing,” he says, adding the nose wrinkle that he knows makes him look cute. It also tells that he is avoiding the question. To the side, Chanyeol’s phone pings, and the bar is just a string of heart emojis. Baekhyeon thought it was not possible for Chanyeol to find someone more childish than he is, yet he managed, and he will have the loveliest laugh lines by the time he passes eighty.

Chanyeol leafs through the details in the folder. Right at the very top of the contract it says the starting date. Eight months from now on. At that time, it would be the middle of spring. Actual footage is needed in order to set the music.

“Oh,” Chanyeol says, hollow and fissured.

 

 

 

Later that night, he collects Kyeongsu, Zitao and Chanyeol in his house as they watch horror movies, all in a bundle on his couch.

Surprisingly, is it Zitao who cries out of pure fear, whilst Kyeongsu cannot be fazed at all, throwing snarky remarks every few seconds. Baekhyeon has become desensitized to the bloodshed, maybe because having such things on TV is common practice at Jongin’s place. Chanyeol is on middle ground, making no sound and no expression, but his hand grips tightly on Baekhyeon whenever the morbidity escalades.

The lengthened tension building up on the screen is cut when one of the phones on the table lights up with a message. It is a string of hearts, kisses, water droplets. They all stare at the device until it dawns on them that it is not Chanyeol’s phone. It is Kyeongsu’s, who blushes and makes to sink into the couch. They turn to him, gawking.  

Chanyeol starts it, by throwing himself at Kyeongsu, smothering him. Baekhyeon adds himself to the mix, raising his voice in teasing him along with Chanyeol. Kyeongsu fights them, asks them to shut up, but never once does he deny anything.  Zitao just stands there, tear tracks on his cheeks, arms poised awkwardly as he contemplates whether he shall do his job and rescue Baekhyeon from Kyeongsu’s headlock or not. He is not on duty today after all.

This fiasco leaves at least a bruise on all of them. They are not unpleasant- like the scratches earned while learning to ride a bike.

It is early when they break up; Kyeongsu has a practice session and a _girlfriend_ to satisfy. Chanyeol has a wife to cuddle with. She has threatened to file for divorce if she does not get her quota per day.

As Kyeongsu fiddles with his shoelaces, his attention pivots away from the strings and he looks at Baekhyeon. He is wearing a pair of little jeans and one of Chanyeol’s hoodies from a decade ago, its expanse gobbling him. Kyeongsu’s scrutiny sharpens. He is the only one who could slice him open with his eyes alone.

“Make sure you eat,” he says, sounding like anything but what he intended to voice. “You’re a waiter. At least steal the leftovers.”

Too late, Baekhyeon just retorts, “Ew.”

 

 

 

He is back in Bucheon, back to Jongin before the sun can set for the third time. His gladness, fretting fondly in his irises, is obvious, presented fully for Baekhyeon to see, and to feel welcomed, missed.

Faced with this, with that vague but strong eagerness, Baekhyeon blurts all of a sudden a possibility that has been gnawing at him. “I’ll teach you, if you want.” He coughs. He does not even notice that that mild pain is his default now. He notices it only on early mornings, when his eyes cannot even open, before the ache comes back to him.

Jongin frowns, does not ask to clarify, does not ask why, but he smiles. “You just wanna brag,” he says.

“But I want to brag about you.”

 

 

They both waste an entire evening on the internet, looking up pianos. Jongin thought it would be a keyboard, one of these shabby things with a buzzy sound. But it is not even a baby grand, but a full sized grand. Jongin brings out a tape measure from God knows where and measures the space in the living room, writing the numbers directly on the floor, directly on the wall.

He gapes at the prices though. So many digits. Baekhyeon just swats him. There was a time when that mattered. Not anymore.

Baekhyeon finishes the order.

 

 

 

Jongin does not treat him any different.

Instead, there will be moments when he will plant his head in Baekhyeon’s lap and make him play with his hair, bliss cloaking his features. The scent of his locks is one Baekhyeon himself picked, and it will cling to his fingers for days.

He does not mutter about fake worlds anymore. In lieu, he talks about Baekhyeon’s passport again, asking this and that.

When the sun is low in the sky, the rumble of cars outside intensifying, maybe Baekhyeon will see something deeper than mere fascination in Jongin’s eyes, something hotter, softer. A yearning, adulation.

Baekhyeon thinks he may be seeing things. The side effects of his pills are many.

 

 

 

When the piano comes, he is surprised at the excitement he feels. The people that came to bring it stop barking like they did on the phone when they see who is opening the door.

Jongin and Baekhyeon watch quietly as it is assembled. It takes a long while, and they are both hungry and tired from having been on their feet all along, surveying the procedure. But Jongin does not go into the kitchen; instead he skips forward, leaning to press on the white keys. He jumps at the sound, as if he does not expect it to make one. It is completely off tune. Baekhyeon will rectify that himself.

Jongin twirls to sit on the bench, fingers poised clumsily over the keys. His pants are fluffy and linty and his tank top is tight and small for he never bothers checking the size before buying. Baekhyeon just stares at him, the elegant slope of his back, a harmonious curve, the length of his fingers, wrist slim, and he wonders if he ever had looked as elegant as Jongin. Then he just unceremoniously drops his fists on the keys like a mad man, and he bursts out laughing.

“I always wanted to try this!” Then he just jams his fists some more, notes shrill in the air.

Baekhyeon erupts into cackles too, because this was also the first thing he did when he first laid hands on a piano.

 

 

 

It takes him six hours to tune it, hammers and pins everywhere, and his ears feel exhausted.

 Jongin comes from his shift with too many cake slices and they just have dinner with that.

“That was terribly responsible of us,” Baekhyeon muses. Jongin looks at him with a raised eyebrow, all impish, a smudge of cream and one of chocolate syrup on each side of his mouth. Baekhyeon stares, _wants_ , then he turns back to his slice.

 

 

 

Soon, tiny potted plants and Jongin’s stacks of books begin residing underneath the piano. One of the feet already has scratch marks on it from Monggu. Jongin had stuck a Band-Aid over the injured lacquer, looking all guilty when Baekhyeon catches sight of it, whilst he cradles Monggu protectively to his chest.

Before the start of the first lesson, Baekhyeon swallows his fistful of pills in front of Jongin- he does not react-  then he comes over with the pot of tea and sets it on the piano, along with two little cups. Baekhyeon explains some music theory basics. The solfeggio, ups and downs, plain, and Jongin frowns, either from not understanding, or from too much concentration.

Baekhyeon still considers he did quite well if he manages to play a twenty second melody with the right rhythm, even if it takes two hours to get him there.

Jongin seems so proud, so bloody proud, playing that short thing again and again, faster and faster until it loses its cadence. Then his face falls. “You should never play that when I’m around,” he demands.

Baekhyeon giggles, downing the leftover tea in the cup, leering at the dark ring left around the pale cup as it sits and offers no reply.

 

 

 

The din of practice stretches over months, at random times when Jongin is awake enough and not writing, when they are free from the café, when the mood strikes. Baekhyeon records everything, every little session, to track Jongin’s progress.

More than anything, it seems that it is he who cannot play for hours on end anymore. In fifteen minutes, he is sated, glad to give up the keyboard to Jongin.

Perchance it is because he sees no need to get lost in music, no need to run away from anything, because Jongin will be getting out of the shower, wet and sparkly as he listens to Baekhyeon, eyebrows determined. “That was amazing,” he will say. This is enough. Baekhyeon does not need to strive for more.

Jongin’s fingers are still not coordinated, and he gets lost way too fast. But he manages to hold a mini mini concert, a repertoire of five songs, and at the end, Baekhyeon gifts him a bundle of askew tissue roses, just him and Monggu in the audience.

After Jongin learns a song, Baekhyeon is to never play it in front of him.

 

 

 

They get complaints. They are phrased cautiously, as if it is not a disturbance per se, but more like a pleasant noise appearing at the wrong time. And so, both Jongin and Baekhyeon coerce a bunch of coupons from Junmyeon and knock from door to door one floor above and one floor below and give them out to their neighbours, apologizing for the commotion. One of them demands an autograph on the coupon, and Jongin smacks Baekhyeon’s hand away, stepping forward and scrawling his name on the piece of paper. “Because I’ve been the one serenading this whole building,” he explains elatedly.

The neighbour cackles along.

 

 

 

Baekhyeon does not notice Jongin standing in his doorway. He is too busy guffawing his ass off at an episode of Running Man. He does not know for how long Jongin stares at him, probably for too long given that he is not even stretching.

He pads over when Baekhyeon beholds him questioningly. He lifts Baekhyeon’s head on his thigh and starts running his hand through his hair. Baekhyeon stills at the contact- it has never been like this, Baekhyeon being the pampered one- but then he relaxes, wills his heart to stay quiet. It has been a long while since anyone has done this to him.

Then there is a moment when Baekhyeon twitches, his legs coming into himself, a gasp spilling over his lips as the eruption of burning spasms scours inside. Jongin’s hand comes over it, over the tight fist, and creeps a few digits into it. Baekhyeon squeezes at them, finding comfort in knowing that he is not alone, that there is someone to hold onto.

“Please tell me when it hurts,” Jongin says. It is the first time he brings back that moment.

Baekhyeon wants to nod, but he knows that he never finds his words when moments like these come. It is another few stabs before it subsides, diffuses, and Baekhyeon can breathe again.

“It’s already passed,” says Baekhyeon. Then something funny happens on the screen and Baekhyeon does not think about it anymore. He does not let go of Jongin’s hand.

 

 

 

For Baekhyeon’s thirty first birthday, Jongin comes to Seoul with him. It takes less than an hour on the motorcycle, Baekhyeon getting daring with the acceleration because he can feel the waves of euphoria emanating from Jongin at each divergence. His arms around Baekhyeon’s waist are tight, secure, palms splayed comfortably.

He bounces on his feet once he dismounts, trying to settle. Sweat is smeared above his upper lip, framing his tremulous grin in sparkles. His verve never abates, even if Baekhyeon has already lost count of how many times he has done this. Without exception, he will be a soggy wreck of revelry, buoyant and gorgeous.

Baekhyeon hunts his pockets for that limp hair tie he had stolen from Taeyeon, red and with a plastic strawberry charm to it, and messily knots his hair atop his head. On anyone else, this would look atrocious, but Jongin assures him, with quite the gusto, that he looks like a hippie aristocrat. Which is supposedly a good thing, for Jongin takes the helmet away from him and puts it away, and says “Let’s go, my lord,” with a bow and an arm outstretched to guide him.

“That’s the wrong restaurant, Jongin. This way.”

“No appreciation for your servant, tsk tsk.”

 

 

 

They are the first there, and the place is completely empty, for it is reserved just for them. The place is exactly the same with only the pictures on the walls getting thicker and thicker. Mrs. Park fawns over him, of course, coming running to take him in her short arms as soon as he steps inside.

Jongin just wanders off to stare at everything until Chanyeol and Tiffany burst through the door. She is dressed in sneakers and loose jeans and a very comfy tee. Nobody would think that she is the CEO of some big shot company that she is.

Mrs. Park does not let go of Baekhyeon even as the couple beelines to receive love from Mrs. Park as well. She swats Chanyeol away. “I get to see you nearly every day.”

Chanyeol wipes a fake tear.

Baekhyeon remembers that he let Mrs. Park braid his hair when he was young, for Yura never allowed it, nor Chanyeol, but he gladly did. Now she offers to do it again, because Baekhyeon has enogh hair to do so.

So Mrs. Park sits behind him doing the work while Tiffany and Jongin super bond with one another. Chanyeol and Baekhyeon stare at them with unadulterated jealousy until they decorously begin pouring each other soju shots, throwing them up on an empty stomach. Jongin and Tiffany are so animated in their discussion that they start shouting at each other. They are both kind of squealing, a million pop culture references spewing out from their mouths, rapid fire. Mrs. Park unscrupulously coos at them.

Baekhyeon and Chanyeol clink another round.

The meal is hearty when it comes. Again, Tiffany and Jongin are too giddy to touch any of the food. That is until Chanyeol cannot take it anymore and spoons something into her mouth to shut her up. Then he tries to smooth it over by making a kissy face. Baekhyeon practically sees her falling for Chanyeol all over again.

“You didn’t stand a single damn chance,” Baekhyeon says to Jongin. Jongin shrugs, good naturedly, and begins pilfering goods off the plates. He cannot find his glass, so he takes Baekhyeon’s.

It is not his birthday really, that will be on a Tuesday, but there is no other time to do this other than now. They attempt to sing him happy birthday. Baekhyeon refuses- his sensitive ears will curdle from the sound, but they do it anyway, including the Parks until Baekhyeon shatters in a puddle of winces.

Jongin actually drinks soju, little sip by little sip from Baekhyeon’s glass, searching each time to wash the taste off. He just steals things off Baekhyeon’s plate, which he does not even know what it is for he was already drunk by the time the food had arrived. Right now there is a buzzed Jongin next to him and a clingy Tiffany all over Chanyeol.

Soon, or maybe late, Zitao comes too.

Given that Baekhyeon is inebriated too, off meds for it, his mouth still sweet from the cake, he clings to the newcomer, to Zitao instead of maybe leaning too much into Jongin. He might do stuff he will regret later, like kiss the living daylight out of him, given he has no filter whatsoever now, and Jongin kind of has dressed up and his shirt fits him so well, and his hair is combed away from his face, up into a mess that is weighted by some wax that smells like the ocean and tsunamis and Baekhyeon never wanted to lick someone so much in his entire life.

“My Knight,” he says, and just about falls into Zitao. He is caught in an amazingly strong hold, of course, and Baekhyeon just rests there, translating the nonsense Chanyeol is sprouting to him. He makes up most of the stuff; it is not like he understands it himself. Tiffany has dozed off, sprawled on the benches of a booth, pillows under her neck. Chanyeol stares at her all star-struck; even with saliva dripping from her mouth into her hair that is crusting up.

Jongin is suddenly bent over him, but focusing on Zitao, trying to get him to drink. He employs a million methods, but Zitao will not budge. All he does is arrange Baekhyeon’s limbs away from Jongin because he is unstable on his feet and he seems terribly prone to falling into Baekhyeon, dead weight, and suffocating his client.

This is when a yawning Mrs. Park throws them out of the restaurant and into their respective beds.

Outside, it is nearly three am, and Chanyeol comes forward and plants the wettest, biggest kiss in the middle of Baekhyeon’s forehead. “I love you,” he says in English, a smudge of doenjang at the corner of his mouth, smiling his crazy, adorable smile. His eyes are too drunk to pick up the motion, so just one curves and the other remaining limp. Tiffany stumbles into him, and comes in front of Baekhyeon and tugs at his little braided top knot and screams “Happy Birthday!” in his face, leaving Baekhyeon utterly surprised at her lungpower. Then they are already stumbling in the opposite direction, ands thrown in the air and waving.

“I love you too!” Baekhyeon hollers after them, feeble but not less true, then he promptly bends down to throw up.

 

 

 

“Oh my fucking God, this place is huge,” Jongin exclaims after Baekhyeon turns on the lights. He cannot coordinate himself, so he turns on all of them. It probably looks like the top of the building is on fire.

Jongin gasps, once more, and then Baekhyeon feels the vibration of him running on liquefied legs through the floorboards. He gapes at the piano. It is a lot different from the one they have in Bucheon- somehow, it is bigger, and a part of its components are made out of crystal. It is blinding in the abundance of light.

“We didn’t have the lesson today,” Jongin says, gracelessly dropping himself onto the bench. He sways for a bit, winded. Baekhyeon contemplates him and nearly falls backwards from the gust of happiness he gets at seeing Jongin’s excited smile combined with the jump of alcohol in his bloodstream. Zitao is behind to catch him, a calm _Sir_ being whispered in his ear, and then he is being manhandled in one of the armchairs near the centre of the main room. Baekhyeon sinks into the leather. He has always liked these, it really feels like he is dissolving into them and he has no bones and no inhibitions.

He watches Jongin move his greasy fingers all over the keyboard. If it was anyone else he would be irked, but it is Jongin, so he finds it positively endearing. Zitao puts a glass of water in his hand, so cold that he shrieks, a high burst that holds for a second. Baekhyeon is drunk, mush-minded, but still has enough collectedness to say, “You have one too, Zitao.”

Baekhyeon does try his best to conduct a lesson. It does not really work; his tongue keeps tumbling into random giggles. He does not even know what to give him anymore, so he just dictates a Debussy something, because it is a thing that can come to his mind without much effort. Thirty notes later, Jongin is transitioning into something foreign- “This Debussy dude must be a dramatic douche,” Jongin mutters- and Baekhyeon is confused, but he can at least distinguish that Jongin is failing in his effort.

Baekhyeon tries to lift himself on his own from the puddle he has become. Then he whines and lifts his hand to hook onto Zitao. He is not any softer than a goddamn wall. He climbs to his feet and lugs himself to the piano, sitting his ass next to Jongin’s. He plays the song Jongin tried to.

“I did it better than you,” Jongin says, and he breathes into Baekhyeon’s face, all stingy and _close_. Baekhyeon saw his tongue hitting his teeth with each consonant.

“That’s because I do not _know_ this song. I was just weeding out your mess,” he slurs, mopey.

“No way.” His fist drops on the keys and Baekhyeon winces.  “No fucking way you do not know the Pororo theme song.” 

“But I uh…I know Brahms instead? And Brahms is better than Pororo?”

“No fucking way.”

Baekhyeon groans. “You insult Debussy, go ahead, he’s a looser, but Brahms is my bro, bloody hell, Jongin.” He parts his fingers and jabs at Jongin, sinking the tips through his ribs and his tummy and his chest and Jongin squeals, making to defend himself until he just about falls off the bench.

Zitao catches him.

“Traitor,” Baekhyeon seethes to his bodyguard.

“Hey, wanna fight? Heard you’re a mega warrior of some kind. Let’s duel,” Jongin mumbles into Zitao’s stomach. He lifts, wavers, and looks up at Zitao all luscious and puppy eyed. He tugs the sleeve of his shirt and flexes, muscles swelling. Baekhyeon can hear Jongin’s teeth scraping together from the effort.

Zitao just stares at him, straightens him in a position that he cannot fall from, and lifts the sleeve of his shirt and flexes too. The material would have torn had he not removed it.

Jongin’s eyes bug out. “Yeah okay, no thank you, I have three children to provide for. Please don’t hurt me.” He lifts his palms on either side of his face, advocating peace.

The amazing thing that happens is that Zitao bursts into peals of laughter and his eyes crinkle and it is a sound so high and so tuneful. Baekhyeon gapes, because this is the first time he has seen the man laugh. All these years, the most he has gotten were a few shy chuckles hidden behind his hand ending with a cleared throat and an _I’m sorry, sir._

“Jongin!” he exclaims, ploughing into him and taking him down into the cushions of the couch. “You’re awesome!”

“What,” he grunts from under Baekhyeon, “What did I do?” He does not wiggle at all, relenting.

Zitao’s laughter subsides to short chuckles. Baekhyeon looks up at him, lean and toned and yeah, Baekhyeon thinks he would have gone a bit hetero if he had a bodyguard who didn’t look like _this_.

“Just being you,” Baekhyeon finally answers, sliding off him. Jongin yawns, cheek smutched on the leather. This is why he does not move, he is half asleep already. He yawns again, and now Baekhyeon catches it too and does it repeatedly until his jaw just about dislodges.

“We look stupid,” he says. Then he licks his lips and gets up, and bumbles around.

“This place is huge. I can’t believe you would come to live in my matchbox when you have this, but holy shit why is it so huge? I think I’m lost, someone send the special forces- Ah- Oh, found it!” then a hop, and a pleased groan. Jongin has just fallen into his bed.

“You can crash here,” he tells Zitao as he picks himself up and goes after Jongin.

Baekhyeon stumbles there, seeing only the light getting in from the living, Jongin among the plain, fluffy white on his bed, wiggling like a kitten. “C’mmere, hyeong,” he mumbles, and Baekhyeon finds himself walking without hesitation, toeing his socks off and tripping in the process, but then he is crashing into fluff next to Jongin, warm and serene.

“Hyeong?” he hears, spoken into a pillow after a while.

“Mm? Don’t say happy birthday. It’s not today.”

“No no.”

“Then?”

A rustle, then the words come clean, dew on Baekhyeon’s face. “I’m really happy right now.”

“Me too,” Baekhyeon manages before going unconscious.

 

 

 

Baekhyeon is dressed plainly, his face covered by a mask, his hair down. Some people still follow him around, update the tabloids.

The woman across from him does indeed wear a beautiful red skirt, lips just as red, her ponytail swishing behind her with each motion of her head as she reads over the documents in front of her. Baekhyeon takes her in with deliberation, and he thinks, maybe he could have loved sooner if only he was normal, if only his preference followed biological rationale.

She recites every item listed there, all his terrains, cars, accounts, buildings, stocks, intellectual proprieties, the rights to his whole music collection. He has a few people to distribute this to, a portion of each for everyone.

At the end, after everything is settled and she can wipe a bit of the professional veneer off, she asks, “How come you want to do your will so early?” She smiles, to placate the noisiness, and the edges of her lips dip into maroon.

 “Just in case,” Baekhyeon replies. He takes it as a good thing- his deterioration is not visible. Then he picks up a piece of rice cake from the little plate next to his cup, and finds that he cannot swallow, for a burn soars up his oesophagus and pools into his mouth.

 

 

 

Jongin is nowhere to be found when he comes back. He was still asleep when Baekhyeon left.

Zitao comes from the kitchen, holding a paper square. “Sir,” he says, handing it to him.

 _I went shopping!_ Baekhyeon reads the scratch. It is such a Jongin thing to do, to leave a note on paper rather than a text. He does not know why he puts it in his pocket, considers it something precious.

 

 

 

Kyeongsu is out of the country, but at twelve on the dot he receives an _oh, you just got older hahaha, sucks to be you_ His inbox and his social media accounts are bursting too.

Jongin is sneaking up on him, jumping in his face with a “Happy birthday, hyeong!!” and holding up a present. Tickets to four stand up comedies, all in the same night.

Baekhyeon looks at the offering, already imagining how sore his abdominals will be after such a marathon. “I might not survive this,” he says, grinning, taking the items.

“It’s incredibly hard to pick a present for rich people. You better like it,” Jongin utters, lordly.

Baekhyeon’s toe pokes through the hole in his sock. They are Jongin’s. They got mixed up in the washing machine. “I am filthy rich. Thank you for reminding me.”

 

 

 

That morning, when Baekhyeon’s tummy is indeed sore from all the laughing and they are incredibly hungover, he calls his mom and asks her to come help them fix the mess of haejangguk they were attempting. There are splinters of bones all over the kitchen. Two obliterated heads of cabbage.

She comes in a heartbeat, hugging him at the doorstep while she stamps kisses all over his face. Baekhyeon begins whining, trying to pull away, but his mother is having none of this. “Shush, I made this face; I have every right to love it.” She proceeds to hug him again, to wish him a happy birthday. She does not hesitate to take Jongin in her embrace too, who has been watching them fondly from the corner. “Wow, you’re gorgeous,” she says, unabashed, looking him up and down. Well, Baekhyeon must have taken after someone. Then she regards her son. “Careful with him, he’ll steal all your ladies.”

“Thanks, mom,” he sighs.

“You could’ve ordered,” she says with a laugh as she enters the kitchen, taking in the disaster.

Jongin and Baekhyeon look at each other, then, “We’re not that low,” they say in unison.

 

 

 

“What is this supposed to be?” Jongin asks.

It takes Baekhyeon a while to discern from where in the house his voice is coming. He finds him on the second try.

“Oh, that’s-” Baekhyeon’s words die in his throat. Jongin has a lollipop in his mouth, blue, his hair in a tiny ponytail at the crest of his head. He is staring at the painting Wu Yifan left on his wall.

Jongin takes the lollipop out of his mouth. He frowns. “You were saying? I really can’t tell.”

 _That’s me_ , Baekhyeon wanted to say.

Maybe it was, before, but now Baekhyeon feels truly happy, feels that there is more to him than his illness.

“I have no idea either actually.”

Jongin closes in, finger tracing lightly a thick stroke of paint. “It kinda looks like mould.” His nail scratches the layer. The dent springs back once the pressure is gone. “Anyway, time to go,” he suddenly says, lifting. He thrusts his lollipop into Baekhyeon’s mouth. “This is good stuff.”

Then he is winking and taking Baekhyeon by his elbow towards the door.

 

 

 

 He catches Jongin staring at him as he plays, intimate, gaze more than focused, passed over into the realm of hazy. His fingers are moving, but his gaze pins on Baekhyeon, dense.

Then at nights, either after a piano lesson or a combat one, Baekhyeon come to him, at first fearful, abashed, but now with confidence, with playfulness drumming the syringe on the vial.

Jongin will drop whatever it is that he is doing and approach him, lay him down on the bed, the couch, the table, lift Baekhyeon’s shirt and tickle him just a bit, just until Baekhyeon lets out a giggle. The smell of alcohol will wing in the air; will feel cold on his skin. Jongin’s smile in the sepia glow, and finally the sting, infinitesimal compared to the strife inside him, and it is assuring, to know that relief is to come. Jongin will tap the area a few times, sometimes will blow over it, and then he will be gone, but not far. Never far.

 

 

 

A month later and Baekhyeon is in the kitchen, drinking some tea, when Jongin bursts through the door. He is sucked on the neck, lips puffy. He is so beautiful, a brume to him, a changed Jongin, like the Kai he aims to be through his writing.

The situation is oddly familiar, but now Baekhyeon cannot help but wonder if he is pretty enough for Jongin, if he is worthy of being in his eyes.

“How’s the hole in my chest?” Jongin asks, and he is twitchy, different, slightly wild. His shoe flies into the wall, leaving an imprint next to the old one.

He actually opens his shirt, button by button, until it reveals a strip of smooth skin along his middle.  Then he comes over, with hesitance, and determination, hand going through the gelled mess that is his hair, strands softened at the tips. Baekhyeon searches him for signs of inebriation, for something to tell him that he is not entirely focused, but then the same hands come gently and land on his shoulders. Then higher, fitting over his nape and along his jaw. Baekhyeon is in his arms, and tucks him right under his chin, one hand dropping to his hip. “Just you now,” he replies himself, and he is being held so tight that Baekhyeon is sorry for being so frail, for being nothing but an already broken glass doll that’s barely held together by cheap glue. “No more hole. Just you.”

He is slightly panting, and Baekhyeon actually hears the beating of his heart, something jumpy, insistent. The smell of his is sweat mixes with cologne and Baekhyeon’s shower gel because he does not bother buying for himself anymore.

“Do you even know what you’re talking about?” He inquires there.

Jongin moves a bit, bending, so his head fits in the juncture of Baekhyeon’s. His palms run down his torso until they wind around his waist, warm and strong, just like he holds onto him on the motorcycle, seeking, needing safety. He breathes there and it is Baekhyeon the one shuddering. “You just feel so good. Everything about you just-.” Baekhyeon’s arms are limp by his sides, and now it would be easy to grab. “Baekhyeon,” and it is a first that Jongin addresses him by his name.

“I’m sorry,” Baekhyeon says, because this is all he keeps thinking about, all that loops in his mind, and he cannot afford to regret unsaid things anymore. He does not know what he is apologising for. Maybe for making Jongin feel this way, when there is no time for that sentiment to culminate. Maybe it is for something else entirely. For himself.

Jongin stays there, just as warm, until he freezes, the locking of his arms turning cold without even moving. He backs away, still touching Baekhyeon, and he is wearing a smile, his lips at it without his will. “Better than silence. Because silence means no.”

“I’m a bit more mannered than a cake,” Baekhyeon says, and it cracks halfway. He smiles too, just his mouth following Jongin’s.

He lets go of him, lingering slides, and then pads into his room. The door closes.

 

 

 

There are things to think about, but that just seems so exhausting at the moment.

So Baekhyeon just rings up Chanyeol, and coerces him into playing DotA with him. There is not a game Chanyeol is good at, but Baekhyeon lets him win, believably so. Then he gets sleepy, and no matter how much he tries to play badly, it cannot get to Chanyeol’s level.

“I’m useless,” Chanyeol mutters. He takes it as a personal offence to be so bad at this.

“Indeed, my ego can only take so much fluffing.”

Chanyeol groans, a defeated little rumble that carries along with the static. “I have no retort to that.”

“I’ll allow you to go to sleep now then,” he offers, shuffling. He handles the tangled comforter from under him, rolling it and hopping his feet over the mound. Stretching out feels good to his bawling insides.

“Was I any good in taking your mind off the matter? Whatever that is.”

Chanyeol just _knows_ , and Baekhyeon feels the fuzziness of belonging. “You were pretty good.”

“I’ll stay more if- ” The high note of a raising yawn and the rush of air afterward severs his words.

Baekhyeon chuckles. “Get your ass to bed, Chanyeol. Talk to you tomorrow.”

 

 

 

Baekhyeon cannot sleep, for his mind keeps screaming that this was not part of the plan. Like his sickness, Jongin was not part of the plan.

 

 

 

The next morning the door is open, like it should be. Mild tension arises between them. Perchance, Jongin chooses to forget about it, perchance he did not know what he was saying. It is not awkward, just a bit more tender, a skirting to their proximity.

They are on the couch, a few days later, and Jongin is snuggles too close, side to side with him, finally breaking the last remains unease, they watch some western supernatural series. It is nice to have him there- he has missed it. Baekhyeon basks into it.

“Is it because I’m sick?” he asks in a weird lull in the story. Jongin’s hand twitches a bit on his knee, a soft cupping. Baekhyeon wants to take the hand, because right now it _hurts_ _,_ but he is afraid of putting it next to Jongin’s, to see how much of the bone is poking through the skin now. “What if I was not?” He dares to look at Jongin’s lips, the cluster of mini pimples at the corners, and the deep cherry from the dry lines cutting through them.

“You think it’s pity.” Jongin says, and it is slightly accusatory, aggravated even. Baekhyeon’s face twists, and a grimace adorns Jongin’s visage. “I just see _you_. That disease is not part of what I see, is not part of what I can’t stop thinking about.” Then it is Jongin who actually takes his hand, pretty and warm and soft now, because he is using the same creams Baekhyeon does. “You didn’t push me away last night.”

This time, it is hopeful, a blinking and then the fear, the possibility of being rejected again. Baekhyeon does not know how obvious he has been, how much of his heart he has shown Jongin already, but Jongin is nothing if not perceptive. He is a brave man.

“Why must you be so wise?” Baekhyeon asks. He lifts his thigh, so they are not touching anywhere anymore, and also takes his hand away.

The tragedy of the movie comes to an end in front of his eyes, and it is so numb now, everything.

 

 

 

Baekhyeon has swallows his pills and has Jongin give him a shot before they both go to the café.

It is busier day than usual, the winds are getting cold, and people seek refuge indoors.

Today, Baekhyeon is working the tables. Jongin is behind the counter, making a bit of a show of his drink mixing. Baekhyeon steals looks at him with every chance he gets.

There is no prelude, just the hit of a fever out of nowhere, eyes rolling in his head, foot one in front of the other until they both just give out on him and he tumbles to the floor along with the tray.

 

 

 

He ends up in the hospital, pierced full of needles. At fault is his medication, rather than a sudden worsening of the cancer, the nurse informs him. It is another nurse, terribly young, and Baekhyeon’s first words are to discourage her from telling anyone what is wrong with him.

On the news, he appears. “A fallen angel,” Baekhyeon repeats the lines on the screen. They do not know what is wrong, but there are pictures and some shaky videos of him in the café, then as he is taken by the ambulance. He wants to shout, but his breathing is weak. “Who pushed me over the rim of heaven though?” he mutters instead. In reply, his heart monitor grants him another beat. How generous.

He keeps looking at the reportage, and he keeps muttering, and he thinks, all these words are things Jongin would say in a much more interesting fashion.

He gets his phone back from the nurse. There are texts from Jongin that mention nothing about the incident. In place, there are a few pictures of some figurines he has made out of fondant in the back of the kitchen. Baekhyeon replies with stickers and salivating bears. Jongin will be at peace with such a reply.

Then there is one from Kyeongsu too. _You had one job, and that was to keep yourself alive_.  Baekhyeon can already imagine his angry brows gathering.

Replying to his mother and father is hard, draining, something about tiredness and the beginning of a cold, the medicine for it.

Nothing from Chanyeol.  Baekhyeon sends one. _Don’t u miss Bucheon a little?_

 

 

 

The doctor berates Baekhyeon with questions. Why is he refusing hospitalization, when his state is so bad, the brimming end of stage two, why has he not started the real treatment?

He is almost angry, his tone grave, earnest, his face direly wrought.

“The treatment,” Baekhyeon snaps, because he has drilled this into his mind, “Is a billion surgeries. I’d be living in the operation room.” He has seen them. Tiny growths all over his viscera, clumped, some of them like soap bubbles, others gathered like grapes. They are everywhere, rebellious pieces of himself that suck on all the life. He thinks of how they will need to be scraped off with a knife, dissected like a vanilla pod, except he will be left a bleeding mess, marinating in the rotten scents of spoilage. Everything inside of him will have to be replaced- he will become a puzzle made out of tens of cadavers.

“It’s so beautiful outside these days,” Baekhyeon continues when the doctor’s face wrings. “And I’ve got a pupil to tend to.”

 

 

 

Chanyeol arrives with Zitao in tow. Baekhyeon begins unbuttoning the issued clothes the moment the two giants come in sight. He does not meet his eyes as he just grabs the big paper bag in his hold. He takes the garments out- Chanyeol has always known his exact measurements, and turns to Zitao

He only wears this expression when Baekhyeon is in absolute harm, vigilant and hard, pupils fluttering, too attentive. “Rip these for me?” Baekhyeon asks, gesturing to the tags left on the clothes. Zitao nods, no _yes sir_ , and he just takes them, robotically, and rips them with ease. “I still don’t know how you do this,” he mutters. The tags were bind with ropes and thick plastic, and he did not even blink.

While he dresses, Chanyeol disappears. As he bends to tie his shoes, he sees Chanyeol in a corner, talking to the doctor.

 

 

 

Zitao has the keys of the car, so they walk out without Chanyeol. Zitao shelters him from the few reporters waiting for him outside, screaming questions, the roar of shutters deafening.

They wait for him there. On the way, he gives the directions to Zitao rather than have the GPS talk. He feels like hearing his voice. Chanyeol remains quiet in the back.

 

 

 

When they are in front of the building and Baekhyeon gets out of the car, slower, for the tightness on his insides cuts through. He opens Chanyeol’s door.

Chanyeol looks at him in disappointment. Baekhyeon touches his face, like that one time when he was twenty, wanted to try love, and Chanyeol would not stop grinning at him. He had closed in, ready to play, lips puckered. Chanyeol had turned away.

Now it is the same kind of disappointment- at himself, at the unfairness of this all, at all the pain he can do nothing about.

“I’ll stay,” he says, so determined. “I don’t trust you living only with this kid.”

 _Kid_. Baekhyeon winces with his own disappointment.

“He’s twenty-six. Where was I at twenty-six? Do you remember?”

He had had his first world tour, and it took half a year. The president himself has sent him a distinction afterwards. Two albums and an orchestra of seventy people all for himself. He had done a bunch of CFs, his face all over the billboards.

“Yeah,” Chanyeol finally admits, expression softening under Baekhyeon’s fingers. “I barely got to see you then.”

“He’s not a kid.” The hand drops. His skin is the slightest bit rough, and his clothes are not ironed.

Chanyeol nods, not entirely convinced. “At least stop working at the café?”

At this, Baekhyeon laughs. “Then what should I do? Keep pickling at home? I like it there. I get to see people; get to hear what they are up to. And I get at least three Aeris per day to keep my ego inflated.”

Chanyeol mouth moves, his lips rubbing together, and he just takes Baekhyeon up by the middle and lifts him off the ground, spinning him around a few times. He groans then, trying to clear up, and then he puts Baekhyeon down, eyes bunching from his smile. “Don’t neglect me though. You haven’t rambled about everything to me these days. Bucheon has plenty of pebbles for me to hear about.”

“Are you jealous of the pebbles now?” Baekhyeon scoffs.

“Of course.”

Baekhyeon waves to Zitao, who is still in the car, and he lets Chanyeol spin him one more time before he disappears into the building, carrying with him the pleasant giddiness Chanyeol had given him.

 

 

 

“Have you done your homework?” Baekhyeon hollers from the door, all grins, and Jongin, who is sprawled on the floor, startles and drops the book he is holding on his face. He bolts immediately to the piano bench, straightening.

“I was doing it,” he lies, and his profile relies the dimple on his face as he smiles.

As Baekhyeon washes off the smell of the hospital, he hears the better and better coordination of Jongin’s playing. When he is done, a bit of water still dripping from his hair, he walks back in the living room and listens to Jongin, correcting here and there. His mistakes are lessening considerably.

After the last note, Jongin squints at him, as if awakened, the first time they meet gazes, look at each other since two days ago when he collapsed. He looks lower and mutters, “These are my pants.”

Baekhyeon stares at himself in shock, but Jongin has already sprung from the bench and is coming for him.

He runs Baekhyeon around the house to get them back, and Baekhyeon cannot even run properly for these are indeed too long. He keeps stepping on the hems as tries to outrun Jongin’s long strides. His legs are shorter, and there is some sedative residue in his bloodstream, so the chase ends soon with him toppling on the side of his bed, at the very edge, as Jongin nearly falls on top of him. He manages to hold himself on one arm before he crushes Baekhyeon.

His face is close, eyes scrunched and his lips tugged down, full and pink. He has a palm on Baekhyeon’s hip, thumb under the elastic of the band, lifting, and then Baekhyeon wiggles away, still giggling and knocking onto Jongin’s supporting arm, who then falls onto him. He lips brush by Baekhyeon’s cheek, the bottom one twisting, so the faintest trail of moisture is left there. In a beat, he is rolling on the other side of Baekhyeon.

“Keep them,” Jongin sighs in the end. They just look at the ceiling, breathing hard until it evens out and nothing else can be heard. Then. “Missed you.”

Baekhyeon does not even think of holding his tongue. “Missed you, too.”

Jongin chuckles and rolls one more time, but the bed is smaller than his own so he miscalculates and just falls with a thud to the floor. “I intended to do that,” comes the groan, and then they remain like this, giggling at nothing until a stomach grumbles.  

 

 

 

At home, Sehun comes and goes a few times. He seems like a ghost more often, his footfalls so quiet. He leaves boxes of tea for Jongin on the counter; this is the only clue he has of Sehun coming over.

Baekhyeon keeps working, keeps going to the café, but only behind the cash register. Waitering is too demanding on the body, but his mouth works just fine. Ringing people up is easy.

They walk home together, pleased by the evening air, or they take the motorcycle and round the city a few times, then come home abuzz, Jongin with too much enthusiasm and fight over who gets the piano.

On the days Jongin finishes a chapter, Baekhyeon throws a concert just for him. His fingers slip, mess up as the fog of the dosage of painkillers takes over.

Yet Jongin still pretends to throw roses at him, and clap like there is no tomorrow.

 

 

 

Jongin has to listen to Baekhyeon talk to his parents, pretend to be okay, tell how well he has eaten, how nice it is to live in a small home, live like a mere mortal for once. He makes faces in front of Baekhyeon, incredibly silly, so a bit of merriment will transfer into Baekhyeon’s voice and over the phone to his parents.

Under the blankets, Baekhyeon’s arms snake around his stomach. There are butterflies here, hopping from tumour to tumour, like a bustling meadow in an abandoned heaven.

 

 

 

Baekhyeon cannot sleep. He has been in the bathroom for hours looking at himself in the white glow of the neon. His hair is an overgrown mess, purple under his slightly sunken eyes. His skin has a yellow tinge, dark tawny in the declivity of his cheeks, pooling thickly in the folds of his lids. The shadow of stubble is irregular, patchy, a rim of grey around his face.

He hears footsteps, short and many, and then Jongin is in the doorway, dazed, his legs held together as he hinges at the hips. He is very close to peeing his pants, Baekhyeon deduces blandly.

Baekhyeon looks back in the mirror. A part of Jongin fits in the frame. He lifts his hair, twisting it atop of his head, so all the crisp edges are visible. Just the shell of him. “I’m not pretty anymore,” he grins then, skin unwillingly lagging along, tiny cute teeth peeking over thinned lips. “Right, Jongin?”

He watches the squeeze of Jongin’s face. For a fraction, it resembles pain, grime resurfacing like scum, gruesome over his usual radiance.

“No,” Jongin simply says, clasping him within his gaze, gentle but searing.

Baekhyeon cannot see anything besides Jongin’s chest then, cannot feel anything beside the pressing dandle of his fingers on either side of him as he hugs him so tight- as tight as the day Baekhyeon started dying, while repeating in his ear that “No, Baekhyeon, you’re beautiful. You’re beautiful.”- and it feels too much like living this time around.

 

 

 

Baekhyeon still relishes in the stench of gasoline, still climbs his motorcycle at least every other day. It is past the point of him wondering what if he is hit, if he lets himself get wrapped around a tree, if he drives off a cliff. It will be sooner, less painful to go like this. It will make the news; it will be spectacular, gather less pity, but will still sell. They will say Baekhyeon changed, became a wrongdoer; that he gave up on music, gave up on himself. Then they will say they will never forget him, and actually forget him three months later, when the next celebrity has a dating scandal. For going out like that will never have enough of a bang, will never have his name spoken by the incoming generations.

Now Baekhyeon speeds across the street with only one thing in mind: to get Jongin that brand of cup ramen he keeps whining for. Nothing else besides this, no alternative endings, no alternative agonies, just a yearning to see Jongin satisfied.

 

 

 

Jongin manages to play the song that made him famous, a thing Baekhyeon slaved over for nearly half a decade. It is not perfect, but Jongin is so amazed at what he accomplishes that his face goes blank.

He desperately searches for Baekhyeon reaction, approval, anything, and the only thing Baekhyeon thinks will ever suffice is kissing him. There is no need for any other catalyst, for something grander to finally break him and take what he has been longing for for so long.

So he just goes for it, fitting his lips against Jongin’s, brief and close-mouthed, and it is nothing if not amazing. Just from this, from tasting the plushness of them he feels relief, bliss washing over him. He will be content with this, for the short rest of his life. He will.

Baekhyeon wants to pull away, just to see Jongin’s reaction-likely disgust, for maybe he really has no idea what he was talking about that night- but he cannot, because it is Jongin the one who moans after the touch is broken, something high and glorious as he yanks Baekhyeon back in. Baekhyeon just takes everything he is given, Jongin’s curiosity too, pushing at him until he is pressed over the keys and panting into his mouth. Greediness consumes him- he wants this joy to spill over, so he sucks on everything he can get, and he is sorry, so sorry for not being up to standard, to not being enough, and on the brink of being gone. Jongin clutches at him like he wants him too, like he cannot even live without Baekhyeon’s touch, legs parted and tight around Baekhyeon, his mouth so insistent, encompassing, searching for whatever warmth is left within him.

They part, for a moment, and this is an imagery he has seen before, a debauched Jongin, but never a wrecked Jongin, pliant and molten and revived. “Is this when the credits roll?” Jongin asks, and as his lips move, he cannot seem to stop following Baekhyeon’s mouth, for the question to be kissed into him too.

It is such a weird question, and then there is a steeling to Jongin’s eyes, under the heavy lidding. More than anything, he is protecting himself. Maybe Baekhyeon has come across as slightly evasive. “No. I want you.”  

Jongin’s smile turns timid, and it is so _full_ from Baekhyeon. He pulls a bit away, cheeks glowing. The movement presses a few keys too, loud and ugly. “Since when?”

“Smug fucker,” Baekhyeon just breathes. His hand does not fall from Jongin’s hair, and he tugs, Jongin’s chin lifting. “The first day I saw you. I wanted you from that day.”

His eyebrows shoot up, and his mouth ticks. “It was one of the most miserable days of my life. And I still managed to charm you?”

Baekhyeon does not reply, his hand just tightens, then smooths over his nape, and he has touched Jongin like this before, but now he can actually delve into it, can revel into the deep meaning of it. Jongin chuckles, perhaps from the tickles, or from the mild rumble of Baekhyeon’s chest in response. “This means you’ve bottled up a lot of frustration.”

His hands brace on his hips, right above the waistband, his palms cupping the protrusion of his hip bones.

“It would’ve helped if you closed that damn door _some_ times.” He pushes into the hold, colliding with the inside of his thighs, the warm plush along them. He could just _sink_ and now Jongin will allow it, will let him be his and this thought alone is dizzying.

“Ah,” Jongin just says, and his lids drop again, maybe too sultry, maybe a fluttering of pleasure as their crotches align, slide together. “I’ll make it up to you.”

Then Jongin is all over his mouth again, keen and just too energetic, a mess of too many desires, and Baekhyeon is pretty sure he has never kissed anyone like this, wanted them so much that he thinks he will crash and burn the moment these lips part away from his.

 

 

 

Baekhyeon has known what loving Jongin feels like for a long while- a season of each has passed, a celebration of each. He has had all this time to imagine what it would be like if it was reciprocated, has fantasized about being the object of Jongin’s affection, his reason for felicity.

What he could not imagine was being someone Jongin could lean on. He could not imagine himself promising Jongin that he will be there when he will need him, that he will be stronger than him.

When his reverie took this turn, he told himself that this is not a possibility, that Jongin would never, could never see him like that- no need to dwell into it.

Now, Baekhyeon does his best to not regret anything, not look back, for he is already suffocating enough as it is.

 

 

 

He expects Jongin to change his mind any time-to push him away now that he knows what touching Baekhyeon feels like, now that the novelty wore off.

But he does not.

In the morning, he wakes to Jongin having a bare leg thrown over his thighs, an arm over his chest. Jongin comes to consciousness slowly, his fingers crawling up Baekhyeon’s neck and rubbing soft circles there until Baekhyeon turns to face him. He is puffy, as usual, and Baekhyeon grins.

“Come closer,” Jongin says, husky and commanding. “Haven’t felt you today. Needa feel you.”

He babbles nonsense, not roused enough for more courtesy. Baekhyeon is amazed every time by the way Jongin asks for him, how he is the first thing to come to his mind, a primary need that manifests itself before his senses are functioning.

“That sounds a little creepy,” Baekhyeon mutters, but he is dragging closer, just as needy.

“Mhm,” he hums, affirmative, snatching Baekhyeon for himself. “I’m definitely creepy. Can’t stop thinking about you. That’s creepy as fuck.”

Baekhyeon likes the smell of Jongin’s skin when it is clean and without any traces of cologne and aftershave. He noses into it, comfortably nestling in the bent of Jongin’s body around him.

“I’m creepy too, then,” he says. Jongin twitches from the tickle of his breath over his neck. He sees the ruins of a hickey somewhere there.

Jongin adjusts his position, so he is nuzzling into Baekhyeon’s neck too. He is sensitive there, extremely so. “We’re two of a kind then,” he whispers and sinks his teeth into the skin.

Baekhyeon accidentally knees him in the stomach. Then he has to spend the whole day making it up to him by having his mouth available for ravishing whenever Jongin feels like it.

 

 

 

Baekhyeon takes a picture of his pout and sends it to Chanyeol. The red of them is glaring, their puffiness too. Baekhyeon licks over them, and they are smooth, exfoliated.

Chanyeol sends a round-eyed emoticon and a string of question marks.

Baekhyeon laughs, the phone nearly slipping out of his grip. It is not from hilarity, but from sheer delight. He makes to type a reply when he feels drops falling on his shoulder and Jongin’s presence behind him. He plucks the phone away from Baekhyeon, and typed in a reply. He seems terribly pleased with himself once he hands it back.

 _The toll of happiness_ says the text. Baekhyeon is torn between snorting and melting. He does neither, merely turning to Jongin in quest for an explanation, but he gets distracted because-

“Are you wearing just a towel?” It is one of these tiny ones meant for _anything_ but being tied around some splendid hips.

“Oh, you’re staring. It means it’s working. I am seducing you. You’re totally seduced. Look how damn seduced you are,” Jongin says, confidence faltering with each word. His palm encloses on the messy knot of his towel, and then he pivots on his heels and begins walking to his room, swaying his butt all the while.

Baekhyeon continues staring, obviously, until he is out of sight. 

 

 

 

 _Jongin did that_ , he sends to Chanyeol. He has not stopped typing in a string of question marks every few minutes for the past hour. Baekhyeon is sure he has not stopped staring at the picture of his lips.

 _….with his fist?_

_….with his mouth_ answers Baekhyeon.

_OMG_

_I know!!_

_OMG!!!_

Baekhyeon starts laughing, bouncy and vibrant, turning around in his bed.

“That sounds great,” comes the shout from the other room, and Baekhyeon falls off the mattress straightaway, too blinded by his own peals.

 

Jongin has no story to write now, but he needs to create, to nourish his god complex, so he attempts to compose something. Baekhyeon shows his support by not saying a thing. His urge to correct Jongin is eating his soul.

But after Jongin presents the melody to him, something sounding as sarcastic as he is, Baekhyeon showers him with compliments and bouts of applause. Jongin smiles, entirely convinced and so proud. He knows how hard it is for Baekhyeon to lie when it comes to such things.

“Now,” Jongin begins, “I’ve been conditioned that whenever I play something right, I get a hot make out session on the piano.”

“I am the one at fault for this, aren’t I?” Baekhyeon says drily. He is not moving.

Jongin parts his legs, and he is wearing these little red shorts, and they ride up- and okay, Baekhyeon gives in.

 

 

 

Baekhyeon finds out what loving Jongin feels like, how to dwell into it, and have him available, have him be fixture of giggles.

He cannot contain all this happiness within himself- so much space is already taken by the cancer- so he sends pictures to Kyeongsu and Chanyeol and even Sehun of him and Jongin in various states of complete sappiness, over and over again, until all of them stop responding altogether.

 

 

 

When they see each other naked for the first time, Baekhyeon instantly blurts, “You’re fucking gorgeous,” like this is the only thought he can formulate in the presence of the gloriousness presented before him.

“You’re fucking gorgeous too,” Jongin declares.

Baekhyeon finally looks at his face, and he is- he is _gaping_.

 “Twirl for me,” he continues, somehow managing to say it without closing his mouth.

Baekhyeon does, reluctantly tearing his gaze away from Jongin, and shuffling his feet on the parquet. He has only turned a few degrees before Jongin groans and comes for him. “My whole body is jealous of my eyes right now. Lemme touch you.”

 

 

 

“Since when are you into guys?” Baekhyeon breathes, too surprised at the deftness Jongin roams him with. It may be the wrong time for this conversation, but Baekhyeon has to know.

“I’m not,” Jongin hums, and the patch of skin from his mouth melts back into the rest, reddened. “I’m into you. And you just happen to be a guy.”

“That doesn’t bother you?” Baekhyeon feels Jongin’s smirk gliding under his navel, then his nose sliding lower, the tip of it grazing along Baekhyeon’s length where it pushes against the fabric of his underwear. It is made out of a sheer material, the texture rough and kindling.

Jongin’s mouth fits over the head, the moisture of hotness of it imbuing right through the barrier. Baekhyeon mewls before he is realizing, oversensitive. “This, you mean?” Jongin says, breath still there but eyes up at Baekhyeon, his glance eaten raw by lust. “No. It doesn’t bother me the least.”

His fingers drag along Baekhyeon, up until his palm encases the shaft and his nails tickle the skin above the waistband. He tugs swiftly, Baekhyeon not even noticing the motion, before a kiss is being placed at the ridge of the corona, fleshy lips parting to encompass it. Baekhyeon seeks to fist his hands into something.

“Even if I’m not, please pretend I’m doing this right,” Jongin continues, and his focus oscillates from Baekhyeon’s face to his cock like he cannot decide which one he cannot get enough of. “I’ll do my damnedest.” His promise sinks into a caress along the head, tongue following the crawl of his lower lip before he lets it slide in, sucking, consuming. 

Baekhyeon moans, crystalline, something way beyond bodily pleasure.

 

 

 

Baekhyeon is talking about rhythms, one hand on the piano as he demonstrates the weaving of each around a string of notes. He still does not notice- he is the one that has been driven crazy all this while- to what degree he can affect Jongin.

His lips are parting, his focus anywhere but on the cadences. All of it is on Baekhyeon. “I fucking love it when you speak Italian,” he says, and it sounds like a growl, like something that cannot be contained within reason, and all he wants is Baekhyeon.

This is acceptance to him- this is what he feeds on, on offering a feeling, pleasure. He is not over with yet. He can still suckle on Jongin until he knows nothing but elation.

“Fuck me, then,” Baekhyeon replies, half in Italian because he does not know all the words, but it is enough, because Jongin is growling and reaching for him.

 

 

 

The amount of syringes in the trash grows by day.

Jongin is squeamish about a lot of things, but not when it comes to erasing the tension in Baekhyeon’s face. He considers it a victory whenever he gets to it before the tears show up, before Baekhyeon curls into a ball and begs for relief.

He barely wears any underwear these days, so Jongin can just roll him over and give him a shot into his butt, where there is actually any fat left. Then his palms will remain there, kneading the flesh.  

“Oh my god, your ass is so cute,” he wails now, cooing while pinching around the faint bruises from the needle picks. His hands are big enough to grab the entirety of his cheeks, and it is fun until Baekhyeon is actually hard, sweaty and bothered.

He wrestles Jongin off him, pressing him to the mattress and grinding on him until he gurgles on his own moans. It is weird to find out that when Jongin is feeling some overwhelming pleasure, he _whimpers_ , some low and thin, melodious little sounds, drawn out until Baekhyeon ceases the movement, then demands for more.

The third time this happens, Jongin panting in the afterglow, he turns to Baekhyeon with a frown. “Are you trying to prove that my whimpering is cuter than your ass?”

“You coo at Monggu, not at the things you fuck,” he quips, seemingly mad.

Jongin just laughs, hiccuppy because of his stretched out position, and he reaches for Baekhyeon anyway, hugging him tight. “Do not take this pleasure away from me,” he pouts, cupping his ass anyway before shutting up Baekhyeon with his lips so he cannot complain anymore. Jongin knows he likes it anyway, from the frequent wiggling he does around him.

 

 

 

Baekhyeon babbles nonsense some times. He has to hold onto walls, has to have Jongin washing his face. He reaches the need of two full shots a day, but sometimes he refuses them.

He is lounging on the couch as he tries to make Jongin discern the difference between a Si bemolle and a La bemolle. His voice catches suddenly, body spasming. He twists to face the back of the couch, to hide his grimace from Jongin. He gets tangled in his shirt, because it is Jongin’s, and it is huge.

Jongin is by him in an instant, on his haunches in front of him. “Does it hurt?” and he knows, he _knows_ that it always does, from when he sees Baekhyeon’s eyes silently brimming with tears from the sheer force of the pain. Baekhyeon only says yes when he wants medicine for it, which becomes rarer, because he will be in a drowsy, mindless state for periods of time that are too long.

This time he does not respond, instead cowering away, biting his lip so he keeps the groan at bay. His eyes shut so tight, as if they are trying to make him not see anything anymore, not feel anything anymore.

He does not notice for a while, that there is a cold rush of air brushing by his lower stomach, that hands are on his limbs, willing them to relax.  Warmth is next- the press of his lips at the base of Baekhyeon’s chest, then lower, a long hold. “What about now?” Jongin asks there. His palms splay on his sides, hot and big over the short, forced stretch given by his breathes.

The lips go lower. “What about now?”

Baekhyeon’s legs stop hitting, sliding from underneath him, trying to run away.

Jongin’s mouth sprinkles love and care and tingles all over his tummy then, still asking after each one, “What about now?” Baekhyeon slowly unravels, the twitches paling. The pain has not subsided- there is still an assault- but it simply does not bother him anymore. It still shears him from the inside, but then Jongin is blowing over each kiss, and Baekhyeon looks down at him, eyelashes wet and tear tracks down his temples. Jongin’s hair seems so soft, and the pucker of his lips is so inviting, ebbing into upturned corners that tug his cheeks into plumpness.

He puts a hand, still shaking, on Jongin’s jaw.

Jongin gets it, surging forward, forearms on either side of Baekhyeon’s head as he dips to kiss his lips too, a soft slotting, as if trying to nudge a butterfly, and then he asks one more time. “What about now?”

“Better,” Baekhyeon says, a sound too whole, too smooth to have come out of the wreck that is his body. Yet Jongin grins like he has never heard anything prettier.  

 

 

 

When they are spooning in bed, Jongin’s arm winds around his stomach and he hums something. It is tuneless, gruff. His palm pets constantly over Baekhyeon’s tummy.

“What are you doing?” Baekhyeon asks. He enjoys the treatment, of course, but it seems peculiar.

“I’m singing a lullaby. Trying to put that pain to sleep. Or to appease to it so it stops bitching.”  He breathes into his ear. “Is it working?”

It is not. Not on the pain. “Mhm, totally.” He shifts to steal a kiss, long and deep.

 

 

 

Jongin is beautiful. Baekhyeon never ceases thinking this. He does not even need any circumstance, Jongin could be doing absolutely nothing and the observation will come crashing into him out of nowhere. 

Jongin assures him steadily, softly, sincerely that Baekhyeon is beautiful too.

But there will be some reflective surface nearby that Baekhyeon can see himself in, his skin tinted yellow from the dissolution of his liver, fine cracks at the corners of his eyes from dryness, the awkward poke of his skeleton, seeking to swim to the surface. In moments like these, when faced with his own image, Baekhyeon cannot believe him. The thought degenerates fast, dread and insecurity plunging between his ribs until he jolts away from Jongin’s hold.

He deserves better.

Jongin reads something else in his reaction- Baekhyeon can hear him reaching for the vial on the nightstand.

“It’s not that,” Baekhyeon is quick to claim. He has plenty in his bloodstream right now. The fires inside are quenched- just sparkling, cold coals left.

“What then?” Jongin asks with tender concern. His hand settles back where it was.

Baekhyeon bites his lip, tastes Jongin’s balm on them, and turns to him. “Am I really-”It takes a while to pull himself back out of the depths of Jongin’s gaze. “Am I really desirable to you? Am I good enough?”

Nothing changes on Jongin’s features for a few breaths. If anything, he is looking at Baekhyun with even more gentleness, even more serenity. “Your health doesn’t determine how good you are. Nor how much I like you, which is a lot. Nor how beautiful you are. It doesn’t determine anything.”

Baekhyeon has known Jongin for long enough to have expected something like this- articulate, piercing, and awfully frank. His heart seems to skip all the beats and go straight to trembling from ardour overload anyway. He is not aware of what is being displayed on his face, but Jongin is tittering, delicate and breathy. He cups Baekhyeon’s jaw. “So don’t ever think of hiding from me, okay?”

“Okay,” Baekhyeon whispers.

“Louder.”

“Okay,” Baekhyeon says again. He puts belief in it this time, so it comes out strong, makes Jongin smile. It is liberating to finally let go of this doubt. “Okay.”

 

 

 

Baekhyeon, as promised, does not hide, does not compare himself to Jongin anymore.

“The only perk of having cancer,” he begins, struck suddenly with the sight, “Is that you get a free six pack.”

Jongin still serves him the cakes he makes, still smells like butter, but it is not catching on him.  The lines are indeed visible, deep dents with a slight skewness, only because there is no fat on him now. The muscles are weak, but the liniature of the tendons shows through. The skin is soft; it does not have much to stretch over now.

It also dawns on him that he has never outright said what his malady is. Perchance, Jongin assumed it is something curable, a minor dip in his immunity, but nothing that he cannot fight. Perchance, Jongin never assumed he is terminally ill.

Jongin’s scrutiny drops to his belly, Baekhyeon’s words apparently unheard. He stares, lewd appreciation tugging at his lips. “It’s a nice perk. They are amazing. I will lick your abs right now.”

He swallows, a flash of hurt wrecking his entire face. It is too short for Baekhyeon to catch it. Then Jongin is licking his lips and dropping to his knees in front of Baekhyeon, delving straight into lavishing whatever is left of Baekhyeon to lavish.  

 

 

 

Jongin is not home. He is meeting with his editor for some contracts.

Sehun comes over. He seats himself at the kitchen counter, eyes darting around the apartment. Baekhyeon comes to sit in front of him. He is prepared to entertain the guest.

“He will be a wreck,” Sehun starts with.

So it will not be just small talk. Somehow, he finds this topic easier. “He will. Please hold your arms open for him.”

Sehun is protective; he would make to push Baekhyeon away, before it is too late, as if it is not already.

His gaze sprints to one of Jongin’s notebooks, open and forgotten on the table, and all he sees there, among the scratch of Jongin’s writing. _I’ll bring cupcakes._ <3

The note left for him. Jongin never says anything to him about love, but there is nothing grander than his off-handedness.

“He really wants to preserve your thighs,” Sehun says, and perhaps he is the saddest, a third wheel to a drama that will wash over him too, second-hand pain.

“I swear, my thighs are more famous than my compositions,” Baekhyeon complains. The tea Jongin has forgotten is now cold; tastes flowery in his mouth, a bloom, a spring, something awakening.

 

 

 

He no longer works at the café. Maybe they notice why, maybe they do not, but he still goes there.  He has to have a shot before he leaves, and he no longer takes the motorcycle, for he thinks he is no longer strong enough to steer such power.

He watches people flirt with Jongin, as always, whilst Jongin only has eyes for him. Jongin comes over to his little corner every hour or so to pick up whatever interesting sentence Baekhyeon has found in the books, since Jongin does not read anymore.

When it is over, Jongin will take his hand, no hesitation, not fearing any dirty looks and walk home with him. It is leisure, to unwind. Baekhyeon is still wearing the mask. It is not really to conceal him, but to make him seem sick, or unavailable.

They are through the park between the buildings of their complex when Jongin just says. “Why didn’t you jump me sooner? Why not that night when I basically threw myself at you like a whore?” Perhaps he is implying that they have lost so much time, missed so many other opportunities of walking hand in hand like this.

Baekhyeon has known the reason for a while, maybe too soon, maybe from the very first day he has had Jongin making fun of him, terribly disrespectful given their age difference, and it was such pure merriment.

So he stops, tugging Jongin down onto a bench under the tallest tree. It is dark already, cicadas and mosquitoes and the dwindling moisture of a dwindling summer. He does not even intend to sit on the wooden planks, planting himself on Jongin’s thigh immediately, arms around his neck. He is too light for it to even be a discomfort to Jongin. “Because I knew that the moment I tasted these,” he presses in close, thieving a kiss from Jongin that he does not have the chance to react to, “I wouldn’t be okay with the thought of dying anymore.”

Jongin halts, a furore of brisk blinks sweeping over the brown of his eyes. Then a gust of something, too dark and too strained flashes over them and all that is left is a void, much more abysmal than they were when Baekhyeon first met him, a strength that could do thing but mar, leaving a charred mark behind. It lasts and it lasts, Jongin seemingly unable to regain his bearings.

It is sudden, jerky even, when he comes back, as if brusquely pushed out of his trance. “That was good. And that’s a lot coming from a hotshot writer like me.”

Barely any of the blankness is gone, and Baekhyeon knows this very moment that this is something that hurt him too, left a cyst just like the ones Baekhyeon is hosting, and he will cry about this, whimpers akin to the pleasured ones, but later, when Baekhyeon is no longer around to coo at them anymore.

 

 

 

Chanyeol calls. He is drunk, tired, or both, in his studio. Something must not be working out.

“Are you sure nothing can be done? Are you sure it’s too late? I’ve looked at different hospitals, I’ve looked everywhere, and somewhere in France there might be something if only you want Baekhyeon right now-“

“Chanyeol,” he says, mellow. It cuts Chanyeol off. Only his breathing remains, still frantic for all the yet unsaid words. “The day it hurt first I thought it was a cold,” he clears his throat, and the scratch bursts with hot pain there. “I did the performance at the Grammy’s that night, I remember.” What a dazzling event it was. “That day, it was already too late.”

He looks over, at a doozy Jongin. He moves the laptop to the side and puts his head on the warm spot left there. He says he has been struggling with the inclusion of some scientific minutia in a scene that he does not want sounding like a freaking science article. He abhors science articles.

“It’s…okay. It’s really okay. This whole thing. Unfair, extremely so, but okay.”

He often wonders if he would have done anything differently if it was a disease caused by a virus, bacteria, some sort of parasite to blame all of this on. He wonders if he would have basked in anger until the very end of his days. But it is not; it is just himself, his body bringing its own demise. There is nothing to get angry at.

Maybe this is this thing he has always heard about, being at peace with the thought of going.

Or lying, because if there is one time when he needs to lie himself into oblivion, it would be now.

“It’s okay, Chanyeol. Let me be.”

 

 

 

The day Baekhyeon knows the paradise is over is the night he falls asleep next to Jongin as they both cuddle in bed, Jongin in his glasses, greasy as they side down his nose and he constantly puffs artificial tears into his eyes, reading novel after novel, seeking inspiration.  

Today, Baekhyeon starts dreaming. He has never remembered his dreams. He has never once woken knowing any ridiculous turmoil that he has watched during his sleep.

Now there is a bunch of dreams waiting for him, utopias, his own memories, but better, more colourful, devoid of all the dullness and the dust.

When he wakes, Jongin drooling on his chest, pink marks on the bridge of his nose from the glasses.  It is like he never even slept- the world, the lives in the dreams were so animated.

It is his body striving to live, to make do of what is left. Not a second wasted.

 

 

 

The next day, Baekhyeon is rushed by ambulance to Seoul. Baekhyeon had called them, and then waited patiently at the front door of the building, headphones in his ears, listening to his own music, fingers drumming the notes into the knobs of his knees.

 

 

 

At the hospital, he is met with a lot of talking, a lot of whispers, and the barge of reporters at the entrance. Baekhyeon is trembling, somewhere on a bed, and he looks at the cameras posed at him.

It is just the time that his mom has her lunch break, his brother, and his father too. He thinks, perhaps he should have put on better clothes, should have put a bit of gel in his hair if this is how they find out that soon they will not have a son anymore.

He is tired however. He hopes there will still be a while until they catch on.

 

 

 

He looks at the billions of cords being plugged to him, at the vials and pills. Soon he will get just a bit better.

It is just a fluid, a substance, and it will prolong him, will let him see a few more sunrises, a few more of Jongin’s smiles.

 

 

 

He wakes up and there is Jongin in the room, his warm hand on his and a book in the other. It is as if it is two days earlier, and they have just woken up. Baekhyeon is snoozy and so happy. So the first thing he does is jam his fingers through Jongin’s ribs and tickle him off the bed from such strong guffaws.

“Now come back. I’m rich enough to have a giant-ass deathbed. We’re gonna fit,” he says, and Jongin is just there, spending an afternoon like all the others with him, pretending they are in Bucheon and everything still smells of vanilla instead of iodine.

 

 

 

Later, Chanyeol comes. The door opens, and Baekhyeon sees him standing there, three seconds too long, a shard of eternity, before he closes his eyes, tight, as if he wishes to never see again. The door closes. Another eternity.

Then Chanyeol enters, a blinding smile on his lips, full of teeth, just like on the day Baekhyeon met him at the playground, and he declared Baekhyeon is very cool and would like to be his best friend forever.

 

 

 

Baekhyeon is aimlessly walking around the hospital halls, seeking to stretch his legs when he comes face to face with a winded young woman, a cameraman behind her. Her eyes are wide, frightened. It must have been hard to break through the security.

Baekhyeon slides the IV pole closer to himself, and he pats down the wrinkles of his hospital issued pyjamas.

She opens her mouth, small and curled upward, even if the size of her eyes does not diminish.

Baekhyeon finds himself grinning at her hesitance. “Ask away,” he says, and he takes a seat on the side.

Like this, he leaves his last words to the world.

 

 

 

“Chanyeol, look at my new home,” Baekhyeon says, opening his arms wide, for the expanse of the hospital building to fit between them. It is night time, a comfortable kind of cold. No more mosquitoes at least. It looks pretty all lit up like this.

Chanyeol is still panting behind him from having taken Baekhyeon on one hell of a ride across the hospital grounds.

“Your new home’s great, Baek.”

“You should’ve brought a house warming present.”

“Oh, I forgot. What would you like?”

Baekhyeon looks down, the scrawny poke of his thighs beneath the blanket. Jongin’s attempt at maintaining his thighs was not so successful. “Cotton candy,” he says.

“Okay, I’ll bring you cotton candy.”

Baekhyeon pats Chanyeol’s hands on the handles of the wheelchair.

“Let Zitao push me back. He puts your stamina to shame. You’re husbanding wrong again.”

 

 

 

There is a tiny little theatre at the hospital, a small little stage, for puppet plays to be displayed for the hospitalized kids from time to time.

Baekhyeon plays there on an electronic keyboard. Pale people listen to him, and there is a smile, even when Baekhyeon has to be helped to step on the little stage.

Now when he plays, there is no more competition. These people have not paid for this; these people are not here expecting quality. They are just here to get away from hard beds, just like Baekhyeon is, and perhaps this is what makes this kind of music the best kind, for Baekhyeon feels alight with passion just like the day he first started.

Often, Jongin will be in the audience, tiny notebook balancing on his thigh, scribbling, but more often, he will be staring at Baekhyeon, squinting when he forgets his glasses and his contacts altogether.

When Baekhyeon gets off, Jongin slides a hand around his waist and says “You killed it,” and now Baekhyeon has no qualms about using all the strength he has left to tug Jongin down into a hungry kiss, passionate and warm, just like a first love should be.

 

 

 

Jongin tucks Baekhyeon under his chin as he mumbles stuff into his ear. He has softened too, his musculature, because Baekhyeon keeps him around so much. It makes it easier for Baekhyeon’s weak fingers to sink into his flesh and bring him in. The rattle of his heart always sounds like bliss.

They watch the news still, sometimes. Baekhyeon likes the fact that he is famous now- he gets to hear all the gossip. It is all over the media now that Byeon Baekhyeon is homosexual, and probably has always been. Pictures of them holding hands, or just laughing at one another, blurry and stolen appear in a medley. Then a short video of Jongin kissing him hard right after he came back after a round of treatment.

“We’re cute,” he says, lips tingling at the memory. Too many pictures of Baekhyeon grinning are shown, the pride of this nation being played by sickness.

The corner of his ward fills with more and more gifts every day, a looming mountain of colourful prayers. Jongin steals all the lollipops he can find.

“They know who you are now. Your sales may drop quite a lot.” What a truth, but this is how society treats gay people anyway.

“But now they know my face too,” Jongin replies, quite smug.  He looks at Baekhyeon, making the most smouldering expression possible. “I could sell anything with it. Worst case, I will just cling to Junmyeon.”

“You’re super sexy,” Baekhyeon just mutters, and his voice is rough, airless, and probably sounds ugly from all the tumours climbing up his larynx.

“You too,” Jongin winks, unfaltering, and Baekhyeon cannot even not believe him when he is so overwhelmingly grateful that there is someone he matters to like this.

 

 

 

To him, Jongin never had the time to be more than a fanatasia, a crumb of wonder that came to him, stuck to him, and could do nothing but root for.

The day he met Jongin, he already had too few days left to feel more.

 

 

 

“Do you think the world will miss me?” he asks Kyeongsu on the first day a whole clump of his hair falls out.  Kyeongsu is the only one who grants answers to such questions.

“Unless you come back, that would be too sad. Missing someone never feels good.”

The blade he uses to cut the skin of the apple in his hand slips. It is a juicy apple, a sekai ichi, brought from Tokyo- he had a concert there last night- and it cuts through the skin of his thumb. “But you’ll never be gone anyway.”

When Baekhyeon blinks his eyes open again, the cut on Kyeongsu’s thumb is closed and no longer bleeding over the flesh of the apple. It is a few days later.

 

 

 

There is Jongin, covering something, and cowering beside Chanyeol’s tallness, as he sneaks into the ward. They get a little caught, and it is Chanyeol who steps out to talk with the nurse.

It is vanilla coffee, just as he likes it. “Is it terrible?” Jongin asks, waiting to be praised for his barista skills.

“Terrible, just right,” Baekhyeon responds, merrily indulging in generous sips. The smell is enough to overpower the smell of death that is surrounding him and Jongin smiles at him with immensurable warmth and Baekhyeon fears that he will suffocate from that before he even has the chance to succumb to the illness.

 

 

 

His parents are here, his brother, Nana too, her belly swollen. Jongdae is somewhere at the back, hesitant, his eyes wide.

Jongin is behind him, keeping Baekhyeon to his chest and between his legs as he whispered stupid lines from his notebook. He can barely decipher his own handwriting.

They do not burst through the door, do not run to him. It just so happens for it to slide open with whilst Jongin’s lips are on his neck, a warm, smiling press to the weakened pulse there.

Jongin freezes, making to get up and greet Baekhyeon’s parents properly, but Baekhyeon puts a hand on his thigh, limp, unmeaning, and whispers, “I’ll get cold.”

“Hello,” Jongin addresses them, his hand still splayed carefully over Baekhyeon’s chest.

His mother is only looking at that, his father too. There is a steeling to their gazes, so forced, so hard, that makes them all look absolutely hideous. He thinks it must be betrayal, for all the calls and all the messages he has sent them nearly every day up to the day he called the ambulance.

“I knew something was a bit off,” his mother says. It does not sound like her at all. Just a stranger with the same voice.

Baekhyeon smiles, “I’m sorry that it is more than just a bit off.”

When they collapse, Jongin turns him around, cradles him into his chest, eyes shut and ears covered by the gentle press of Jongin’s palms. There, he hums all the melodies, all the memories that never tasted the air until he dozes off.

 

 

 

Jongdae lingers around.

“Hey, how was sooneung? Did you do well?”  That passed long ago. Baekhyeon has forgotten about it.

“Yeah, I did quite well,” Jongdae nods, and he fidgets. Very few of the other family members want to see him, surprisingly. Baekhyeon is glad, but Jongdae is here, because Baekhyeon is his role model, the coolest Hyeong ever. Baekhyeon left him something in his will. He does not remember what, but it is not tiny.

Jongdae sits on the edge of the bed, and Baekhyeon approaches him, sneaking a hand into his pocket and discovering, just as he thought, two cigarettes. They are not even wrinkled.

“Do not do this, brat,” Baekhyeon chides. Baekhyeon too often thinks on what he could have done wrong: too much drinking, too much smoking, too much stress. How did he mistreat his body so that it ends up abandoning him like this? Maybe it is nothing, it just happens, it just happens to be him. There is no point wondering now.

“I won’t anymore. Your boyfriend gave me quite the lecture about it too,” he says, sheepish. “Your boyfriend is great, hyeong, by the way.”

Baekhyeon chuckles. Nobody else called Jongin his boyfriend so far, not even himself. Also, it is nice to be accepted, and for other people to see just how irresistible Jongin is.

“Maybe greater than you,” Jongdae continues, and Baekhyeon bops him on the forehead. Jongdae pretends that it hurts, like Baekhyeon even has the strength now.

 

 

 

Jongin is staying with Chanyeol for now. He goes to practice rooms in the company whilst Baekhyeon is away, for a little treatment, or sedated. He dances a bit too, with the girls there, and they fawn over him. Apparently, he has some inborn talent at it.

“One of these chicks would make for a hot ass protagonist,” he gushes dreamily.  

“You cheating on me already?” Baekhyeon teases, perhaps more aberrant than he means to. He lies to himself; he says it will not hurt if Jongin found someone else now. A girl his age with enough quirks, rather than the dullness he has become; or anyone to protect him from what is to come.

Jongin sighs, dramatic, and he bends to press his lips to Baekhyeon’s forehead. Baekhyeon tugs at him, even as the needle in his arm shifts uncomfortable, and he tugs until their lips meet.  He is so tall, so good, so pretty, that when they part, mouths bitten and pleased, Baekhyeon scrambles for his bedside table, and further, where the ring of keys is- the motorcycle, and their apartment in Bucheon. He fumbles under the distressed gaze of Jongin until he is left just with the ring, keys fallen to the floor.

He reaches for Jongin’s left hand, and slides it there, up to the knuckle. It is a bit rusty.

“I put it on the wrong finger,” Baekhyeon muses, dejected. He rubs at it, the hands he loves more than his own. “And this is kinda lame.” His eyes lock on Jongin’s, “But please be mine.”

There is a bracing to this eyes, a softening to a bloom, but he is not saying anything.

“It’ll be part time too.” Baekhyeon pleads.  “You’ll be out of this marriage so fast.”

Jongin shatters into him, not crying, yet, but something more powerful than that, and Baekhyeon is hollow enough already to fit another person between his ashen ribs. His arm bleeds and bleeds around the needle, but it is nice, because Jongin is here with him, and Baekhyeon would not have it any other way.

 

Between a shot of opioid and the next, he always feels the pain. It is immense, and Baekhyeon is still delirious enough to wonder why his body is doing this to itself. What help does it bring to hurt so much. Where does all this suffering even fit. He’s so small now. How big can the disease in him be for it to hurt like this.

From other wards, he hears other patients. A few of them still have the strength to scream, ripping his eardrums, and when they scream, more than anything, they beg for death.

Baekhyeon never once begs for death. If Jongin was to hear him say this, the devastation on his face will hurt way worse than any cancer ever can.

 

 

 

His parents, his brother, and Kyeongsu, too, they all come to him with baskets of fruit and other sweets. Like he can even eat. They cannot talk, it seems, all they manage is to stare at him for a moment, not even at his face, but some other place on his body that does not show the disease. Baekhyeon has seen his parents every day, and has only heard their voices the day he apologized for dying.

“Did you bring your red carpet along, Kyeongsu?” he asks his friend instead. He does not avoid anything. In all the stillness, the short bursts of wakefulness he has, he hears news, he hears about Kyeongsu winning prizes, of getting big. He being here right now may be a cutting into his schedule.

“You should’ve,” he continues then. “I really like walking on them. I haven’t in a while.”

He knows that he is staring into empty space, unfocused, and it just so happens to be his mother there. Her hair is nicely combed. It makes her look young. “But actually, I don’t think I’m worthy to walk on one anymore. Good thing you didn’t bring it, Kyeongsu.”

Then he turns away, his back to them, and he is a slump so small, buried under the sheets, and it has never been so easy to just close his eyes and be gone.

 

 

 

“Is not my beloved wife so pretty?” Baekhyeon says to the nurse who has just finished feeding him a few mouthfuls of some sort of mush just as Jongin steps in. He seems to be walking in slow motion, hair in the wind, sun in his eyes, an angel to lust over; an angel that is his.

He is holding something, and upon closer inspection, he notices that it is a book. The cover is dark blue with swirls of gold.

“You’ll be the first,” he says, settling on the edge of the bed next to Baekhyeon.

“What an honour,” Baekhyeon replies. He is excited. Jongin’s worlds are amazing, his words too, Jongin too.

“Well, that polenta mushroom thing was good. And I promised.”

Baekhyeon looks at him in confusion. None of this sounds familiar. His memory is giving up on him. He peers at Jongin pleadingly, asking for clarification. Jongin just shakes his head and opens the book, starting to read.

 

 

 

“Take off your glasses, wifey,” Baekhyeon says at some point, because he keeps catching his reflection in the lenses, and it too macabre to him, compared to the mood Jongin has painted with words.

“But wifey,” Jongin looks at him, “I can’t really see without them.”

“Then read slower, so you stay more.”

“I won’t leave anyway.”

“Then just- ” Baekhyeon finds embarrassment in this request, “Just read slower. I can’t really understand you.”

It is the medication dissolving the sharpness of his mind. Jongin _knows._ “Sure thing, wifey.”

This is a story Jongin has written all he has known Baekhyeon for. He is condensed there, the reader warming up to the story just as they had to one another. Baekhyeon giggles at the phrasing of a fragment, and Jongin as usual, whispers, “How beautiful you are,” every time he smiles. This joke is so dry. Maybe Baekhyeon is laughing just so Jongin has something to mirror.

It is night already, and Jongin has moved around his bed after complaining of ass pain. The nurse comes to inject something in his IV drip, and he knows he will soon fall into a long and deep coma. The last thing he hears is Jongin saying is, “Epilogue,” voice low and alluring, and it so fitting, perhaps, the pretty intro to their own ending.

 

 

 

When Baekhyeon is out of the hospital, Chanyeol greets him with that cotton candy he promised. He is not late. He just does not like acknowledging the hospital as his home.

Baekhyeon is wearing a fuzzy beanie over the baldness of his head, and he is in a wheelchair. He lights up at the sight of the candy, trying to jump to it.

“You look like an excited five year old, Baek,” Chanyeol tells him. It is winter now, snowy, just as he likes it, and the never ending lights on all the trees and poles and buildings.

“I am. Both five, and excited. My favourite people are here,” and he grins yet again, taking a small piece of the pink cloud of cotton candy and putting it in his mouth. “You too, Zitao,” he says, and he reaches to share a piece of with everyone, feeds a piece to everyone.

Then to Jongin last, his eyes just so tired, so tired for a moment. Baekhyeon just knows that he is thinking too much about this. “It’s just me sharing my cotton candy,” he says, tugging on his jacket so he descends to Baekhyeon’s level, eye to eye. “Not a metaphor, not a reference to anything.”

Jongin just looks at him, as he had been trying to encode everything, to compare everything, already coping, and he just says, “I love you.”

Baekhyeon laughs so hard, just the motions of glee filling his mouth with blood from where the cysts over his heart burst. It does not deter him the least.

 

 

 

Baekhyeon dies on a winter evening.

He is cocooned in blankets, on the twenty third story of a building in Bucheon. The TV is on mute- Chanyeol’s group is having its comeback stage. A real Christmas tree flashes colours before his gaze. He listens to Jongin jamming keys on the piano. His posture is slumped, carefree. He has never been stolen by music, but merely endeared by it. The ring is still on his finger, hitting onto the ebony by mistake here and there, a dull sound that brings Baekhyeon joy.

He is playing Flight of the Bumblebee. He is not very successful at it.

“But I plan on making it flight of the turtle!” His tongue pokes between his lips, and the lower one rounds under the weight. His fingers are separated widely, the skin between them white.

“But Jongin,” Baekhyeon says, and his voice is thin, like all the tissues within him, but the word, the name blazes in his mouth with love. “Turtles do not fly.”

“Not with that attitude!”

And Baekhyeon giggles, so bright and so vivid, and he falls into it until he cannot resurface anymore.

 

 

 

National bereavement is declared after Baekhyeon’s funeral.

For three days, the concert hall wearing his name is full, bursting, a million people coming and going. On the stage, it is Jongin, playing all the songs Baekhyeon taught him, again and again, hours on end until he cannot hear anything anymore. 

Still, it is better than crumbling.

 

 

 

Jongin receives an envelope in the mail. It is a part of Baekhyeon’s will. He has left him Aeri, he has left him land, and a tiny piece of tissue, stained with tea, with an _I hope you will still try planes._

 

 

 

Jongin still plays, every night, while thinking of vanilla coffee and puppy-like eye smiles. That ring is not off his finger until it corrodes to nothing and one day just snaps off, leaving a rusty indent in its wake.

Only that day does Jongin stop playing and moves on.  

 

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Perfectedart fic exchange. 
> 
> This is not an accurate depiction of how cancer works. Not at all. What Baekhyeon has is a vaguely cancer-ish disease in the sense that the mechanism of triggering it is similar. Then it is all a mess. This made me a mess. 
> 
> A quintillion thankies to my senpai for making my English readable! And for existing in general. Thank you, senpai! ^^
> 
> Oh god posting fic for the first time is nerve-wracking. 
> 
> *insert video of Baek laughing hysterically*
> 
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aIUudeG99Hg


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